


plantsman's fable

by bee_bro



Series: yarrows verse [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Human, Annabelle is Martin's scary friend but she's cool, Canon Asexual Character, Dating, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/F, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Found Family, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Meet-Cute, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Shitposting To Your Boyfriend At 3a.m., all gays share one braincell and jon does not get to borrow it for a SINGLE chapter, and they were NEIGHBORS??, florist au except HOME EDITION, jon has a hard time making good first impressions, martin's poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/pseuds/bee_bro
Summary: Jon moves into a new apartment and almost immediately dumps soil (accidentally!!!) onto a neighbor's balcony.Somehow, there are more pros to this than cons.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan Sims, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Series: yarrows verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751422
Comments: 384
Kudos: 616





	1. jon has a wild time and georgie has a laugh

**Author's Note:**

> feel-good au, classic troubles of local cryptid man with ideas he thinks are good.

> _Flowers_
> 
> _Upon a yarrow's gentle hold_
> 
> _May peace be found, akin_
> 
> _To home,_
> 
> _And in the evening's light so dim,_
> 
> _May yarrow's leaves-_
> 
> _However thin-_
> 
> _Be my heart's thief._

It's not a flower Jon knows the name of. Instead, he knows something else entirely: whatever it is, he is prolifically allergic to it. Specifically to the supremely unfortunate inbuilt garden of them on his new balcony. It comes as a sort of delayed toxidrome, since it takes Jon a day and a half after moving in to finally open the balcony door, after which it's all very downhill very fast, because he hadn't bought allergy meds in weeks (because his last apartment didn't have!!! any murderous plants!!! only murderous landlords!!! wtf!!!) and it took him an hour to identify the cause of his bleary eyes and running nose. 

Stumbling out of his apartment looking like a crashed cocaine addict, Jon angrily locates the nearest drug store, consistently miserable, and acquires the sweet sweet salvation of clear eyes and breathability. Dreads returning to his apartment. Takes several unnecessary detours across town to collect sad groceries (cup noodles, soy sauce, grape juice) and calls Georgie to complain. She's too smug on the other side of the phone. 

Jon returns home after taking another hit of the anti-allergen and closes his balcony door very resolutely. 

Two weeks later and with mild bouts of sniffling Jon is exceedingly aware that he cannot live like this forever. The pollen gets into his apartment one way or another like some very persistent pesticide. Georgie's drilled him into a habit of at _least_ keeping windows open, if not going outside, so being threatened by Local Unidentified plant is ruining Jon's life a day at a time, among other things. 

On a Saturday he knocks back some medicine, ties a scarf around his nose and mouth, puts goggles above his glasses (painful but better than POLLEN in your EYES), dons some elbow-high rubber gloves, and braves the balcony with a trash bag and spoon. If he's paying for an apartment with a balcony he will die of monetary shame if he ends up never using the balcony due to biological failure.

Spoons, Jon finds out, are not good substitutes for shovels. He finds this out first while unrooting the plants, and then again, when he accidentally sends dirt and a clump of plants flying over the balcony rail when the spoon comes unstuck from the ground. It's okay though.

It's not okay at all: someone knocks on his door a few minutes later.

Jon, slathered in dirt and slightly sniffy (and very very damningly aware of the importance first impressions carry) opens it with the residual hatred for landlords and rude old neighbors fresh on his mind. He is expecting.... well whatever he's expecting is not necessarily what greets him. 

The woman on the other side is only mildly surprised by Jon's rather... unconventional attire, and above all, she's grinning. It's not a smile, per se, more of _'I find the situation hilarious at your expense, now dance for me, funnyman'_ and Jon is suddenly deeply unsettled. She holds a plant by its neck in her fist, dirt dribbling onto the floor. 

"This landed on my friend's balcony." She carefully moves some of her bleached hair behind her ear with a bony hand, Jon watching the spindly motion of her fingers. "I thought it due to return the _pleasantries._ New neighbor?"

Jon's about to reply but someone else pops into the hall from the staircase: "Annabelle, it's fine really! Leave my neighbors alone," He jogs up to Jon's door and this Annabelle, looking cripplingly apologetic, "It was probably an accident," He then turns to Jon, "I'm really sorry, she just likes intimidating people! I'm Martin," he sticks his hand out.

Jon hadn't taken the soily gloves off to open the door and almost forgets he's wearing them now. Martin notices the state of Jon's hands and smiles even wider, "Oh, you're gardening?"

"Um, something along the lines." Jon feels increasingly unnerved, having _not_ planned on meeting anyone today at all, let alone participating in conversation. 

"Oh! That's really cool!" Martin (who he assumes is his neighbor from downstairs) is like the polar opposite in benevolence to Annabelle's sharpness. 

Jon deadpans, "I'm allergic to them."

Annabelle hides laughter behind a hand, obviously so, as Martin's eyebrows crawl up into his hairline as he notices the spoon in Jon's hand. 

"Oh god..." Annabelle wheezes out, "Martin... Martin, don't volunteer I beg you."

Jon frowns, feeling like the punchline of a joke he didn't get to hear, "What do you mean?"

"I'm uh..." Martin goes a bit red and shrugs, "I'm a florist and keep a garden... Do you need help? Sorry we just barged- Sorry Annabelle just barged into your life like this, and I'll understand if you'd rather prefer to continue on your own!"

Annabelle is now wheezing dry laughter and grasping Martin's shoulder with the hand that's not holding the sad, bent plant, "With a SPOON." 

Jon bristles. "I think I'm rather fine."

This kicks more laughter from Annabelle, which is so remarkably patronizing it must be a talent, "Yes! Of course, hazmat suit and spoon, tossing shit over your balcony and into other people's tea-"

Jon slams the door shut. 

He stalks back to his balcony, hearing _Annabelle!!! Look what you did_ \- from behind the door. He's fuming, he hates nosy people no matter how much he's been told he IS one of the nosiest people Georgie's ever met. Jon stands on his balcony for a while, then hearing Annabelle's and Martin's voices resurface a floor or two below, Annabelle seemingly speaking louder on purpose so Jon will hear her. _Something dirt shower something manic neighbors something something_. Jon leaves the plant uprooting activity for another day.

Jon showers like he's trying to scrub his own skin off, meticulously cleans everything he was wearing for leftover pollen, and watches Barcroft on YouTube for three hours in the dead dark of drawn blinds. Georgie texts him, obviously looking for a laugh.

_so is ur balcony edvn more bioharzados now cause u tried to fix it???_

_jon_

_jon i need to know_

_omg he died._

_he dead._

_Georgie I'm alive._

_oh!!! surprise...._

_admiral says hi_

_Tell him I love him._

_i will_

_:,((( evading balcony question...._

_...I got maybe halfway done. My neighbors came to complain._

_?????im suddenly so awake_

_pls...pls...the tea... spill it..._

Jon explains the situation in a light he hopes does not paint him as the absolute worst new addition to have to an apartment building. And a light that best conveys the downright _horrible_ energy that Annabelle expelled. 

_don't bash on her viiibes_

_dude you r literally the same_

_spidery bitch...._

_doesnt know how to smile...._

_upsets strangers..._

_pretezels is the same...._

_Am not_

_???um_

_yeah u r_

_also i can't (m no i can..) believe that a neighbor SAW u lookin like u just climbed out of a grave after being buried in cleaning lady attire and then offered u professional help and u slammed a door in his face_

_will u be moving again to run from the terrible impressions u make on ur neighbors???? jom... tbh funny but oh GOD_

_Georgie it's fine, it's not like I'll ever have to see him again._

_u love in the same building_

_*live_

_go apologize or smth before they write up a petition to evict u..._

_I'm fine thank you_

_jon show me the spoon u ruined_

_The spoon's fine_

_its bent isnt it._

_jon show me the spoon._

_I'll apologize to them tomorrow._

Jon does not apologize to his neighbors 'tomorrow'. Nor the next day. Or for a week. He just avoids his balcony, avoids all neighbors, and avoids Georgie's pestering. Goes to work at the library and tries very hard to be a good, professional supervisor. This is not made easy by his coworkers. 

It's getting warmer though and Jon's air conditioner unit smells weird so he goes to open the windows. Can't because _guess what is outside??? Pollen_. This goes on for another three days.

Jon goes out, buys muffins ( _idk get them smth baked like a cake or whatever,, its the best form of apology.._ -Georgie The Allknowing) and goes down two floors in his apartment building. He vaguely knows Martin and Annabelle must live directly under him and expects to rely on that to find their door, except as he's slowly and very reluctantly making his way down the hall, the stickers over one specific doorframe clue him in. Jon sighs and knocks after a very long bout of standing right outside and sending Georgie hatemail. 

Martin opens the door, glasses inexplicably fogged, wearing an apron. 

Jon, for a rare second, thinks he'd forgotten his meticulously prepared and memorized speech. Snaps back into it, "My friend reasoned it deeply rude to have slammed a door in your face, so I'm here to apologize for my less than friendly behavior with the help of this token of peace." Jon lifts the muffin box, "I hope my wrongs as an acceptable neighbor can be righted." 

Martin stares at him a bit blankly, "What... OH!" A smile breaks onto his face, "You're the yarrow guy!" He steps aside and very definitively ushers Jon inside, "Sorry didn't recognize you without the armor," he chuckles and closes the door. 

Jon looks around the apartment involuntarily. He can barely recognize it's the same layout as his own, because while Jon's place is still pretty barren and relatively populated by moving-boxes, this one is .... very... lived in? A bit crowded but... hm.

Jon, feeling a bit lost, follows Martin into the kitchen. He'd expected to hand off the muffins and fuck right off and out of there, but alas people just seem hell-bent on interacting with him. Martin returns to the stove where he must've been cooking _(oh shit Jon!!! you dumbass, showed up at a bad time! haha....)_ , and calls over his shoulder, "Sorry, never caught your name!"

"Um, Jon. I, hm, just wanted to... drop in and leave these-"

"Oh you can put them on the counter, I'll be right with you, gimme a few minutes!"

Jon, feeling excruciatingly out of place, sets the muffins onto the kitchen island, "Yes, um, I don't want to intrude... Or anything..? Wouldn't want to interrupt your guys' dinner..."

Martin glances back at him with a wide smile, he's so approachable it's appalling, "No, it's absolutely fine! Also if you're so tense cause you're scared Annabelle's about to come out of nowhere to deck you, don't worry, she only visits me on weekends when she's in town, no one else in this establishment tonight." Martin shrugs and turns back to cooking.

Jon hates that it really does help ease the tension in his shoulders. "Um, of course... Anyway, again, sorry for... Being less than pleasant."

Martin turns the fire off, "Mm, I was a bit more worried you'd file something against Annabelle's, _how to say_ , emotional harassment. And, don't worry I won't be signing any eviction notices against you. Annabelle would've, but she doesn't live here and I can always threaten her by changing the lock on the door. Hey, um, do you want spaghetti?" Martin turns to face Jon, holding, the spaghetti strainer over the sink, "I know we've talked like for five minutes _tops_ and it's kind of weird to ask, but also it's kind of weird to dig plants out with a spoon. So. I guess you're not the most standard citizen."

Jon does not have to interact with many people on any basis at all. He's got a few friends from high school and college and he rarely makes new ones- doesn't at all, actually. So he can't say that this is... Out of line for first interactions, since he doesn't have a lot of them. But he _knows_ this is not how things are _supposed_ to go, right?

And _yet_ he can't complain about weird behavior from strangers because he, himself, has been complained ABOUT by strangers before.

Jon, very confused and mildly intimidated by Martin's politeness, nods.

"Neat!" Martin goes to retrieve an extra plate, "Again, I hope you aren't agreeing cause you feel guilt-tripped.. Oh no have I guilt-tripped you?? Jon, I am so sorry, please don't agree just cause you feel weird about the plant situation!"

"Wow wow wow," Jon raises his hands, "Um, no... It's.. It's fine, I'm not doing this out of obligation. Actually, I'm.. I'm not sure how I came to be in this situation at all, but... Um... The spaghetti smells good...?" 

It's.. not the strangest way he's ever made acquaintances. Martin looks unfazed enough that it's probably true for him too.

The spaghetti is amazing, home-made pesto and all. The most Jon's cooked in the last month was oatmeal. He doesn't tell Martin as much but does stumble his way through expressing gratitude. 

"M, I'm glad you like the impromptu unexpected pasta invitation, hope you don't go to write a Reddit post about your weird neighbor later though." The way Martin smiles when saying it eases Jon's mild panic at being scrutinized.

"Well, if anything, I think I'd be more worried about the invitation than the spaghetti... Do you just let everyone you meet come over for dinner? What if I'm a serial killer?" Jon eyes Martin's pleasant smile and the wide shrug of his shoulders. 

"Too bad for you then." Martin winks and doesn't elaborate and Jon can kind of see how terrifying-terrifying-Annabelle is friends with him. 

"Oh no, are _you_ the serial killer, Martin?" Jon points his fork at Martin, almost immediately getting second-hand panic about whatever he just said- what if the joke isn't well received?- fuck what if he IS a serial killer and the spaghetti is poisoned?

Martin laughs lightly, "Tough luck there, you sure looked excited about it though, what are you, a writer?"

Jon bristles, "Not professionally... How did you know?"

Martin refills Jon's mug of tea, "I've got friends that write... You always see a wicked little glisten in their eye when they land themselves into potential danger..." Martin shrugs again, he does that a lot. 

Jon thinks about Melanie and can't argue. 

"So if you don't write for a living, what do you do?"

"Um, I'm the new librarian in town... And I do voice acting side gigs." 

Martin brightens, "Oh cool! Do you know Sasha and Tim?"

"Uh...yes. They're my assistants..." Jon is suddenly very very afraid for no pinnable reason.

Martin's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline again, he's a very expressive man, "Wait do you happen to be.. _What was it_. Jonathan Sins?" Martin leans a bit across the table, squinting. 

Jon is VERY very afraid.

"Sims...Yes..."

"Wow." Martin sits back, "Well, your coworkers have name-dropped you enough times I guess. I'd say it's been all good things but..." He's still smiling though. How bad can it be?

Jon asks exactly that.

"Well, it's more along the lines of _'you won't believe what I saw my boss do today'_ ", Martin collects the empty plates and returns with more tea, retrieving the muffin box. "It's like watching a nature documentary about a raccoon lost in a library, no offense, oh god, really, no offense. I'm sure you're good at your job, I just get to hear the tail end of Tim's complaining. I think you're their favorite discussion topic when they're out drinking...." Martin must see how horrified Jon looks, "But! I have never gone along with them to bars so I have decidedly not heard most of it." 

"That's.... mildly reassuring." Jon sighs and accepts a muffin he'd brought. "But... well, after you'd seen me um... Uprooting my garden recently... I don't know how much I can still save face."

Martin snickers at that, it's really easy to make him laugh, huh, "How'd that go by the way?"

"Um... Abandoned."

"Don't you have an allergy?"

Jon sighs "Yes I do. But it's a whole balcony-long flower bed and I'm not emotionally equipped to eradicate it without further damaging apartment property or your own balcony by extension."

Martin nods along, "Yeah, I've got the same flower bed down here," he jabs his thumb over his shoulder and Jon careens to the side to see Martin's balcony through the slide doors, richly adorned with plants and very clearly well cared for.

"It's pretty."

"Mm, you know, you're the first person I've met with an allergy for yarrows, of all flowers... Well, do you still need help with that- or rather, sorry to, um, just _march_ into your business like this, but... Would you _like_ some help? I have tools and I can either completely get rid of the garden or replant some stuff that won't make you sneeze..." 

Jon sips his tea and considers how much Georgie will shout at him for turning the offer down. A lot. He also thinks about the benefits of having a balcony that doesn't cause severe misery. Quite a lot. So he agrees.

They decide on next Wednesday.


	2. pleasant complaining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Georgie cyberbully each other. Martin fixes Jon's yarrow problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit shorter and definitively less martin-related this time but I s2g it gets Real gay soon  
> I love Georgie

It must've been the fucking spaghetti. 

Why else would Jon be thinking about the encounter, two days later, fresh from work and tired from standing all day if not for the ridiculous novelty of the situation? And yet, in his rather tedious life, the spontaneous pasta dinner stands out like a sore thumb. He is about to tell Georgie as much.

He's waiting for her to call, ready for their weekly Complessions (Complain Sessions) as he picks through a pack of fruit gummies.

The Skype notification pops up and Jon messes around with his laptop until the camera angle is somewhat presentable. Georgie might've seen him at some rather worse times, so the rare bad video call can't be too bad, but he also knows about her affinity of screenshotting him. 

"How is my second favorite bastard doing?" Georgie comes through with only minor lag, also lying on her bed.

"Mm, I'm still second to the Admiral?"

"You're yet to do something spectacular enough to make it to first. Have you knocked a plasma flatscreen over and shattered it with your big fat housecat butt before? I don't think so. Also, that was not an invitation." She points accusingly at her webcam, illuminated only by her own screen.

"Too late, I'm adding it to my calendar."

"Jon, you are - and I am sorry - the most flatassed man I know, so you'll have to try so so hard to knock my new bolted-down TV over."

"Unlike the Admiral, Georgie, I possess opposable thumbs."

"Mm, I'm glad god has granted you the ability to hold objects in your hands and you've used it to terrorize neighbors. Please tell me about how the apology went."

Jon sighs, "Very smooth segway, Georgie," He shoves the empty gummy pack away and retrieves a soda. "Well, unlike what certain people seem to think, I did indeed go apologize instead of chickening out and eating all the muffins on my own."

"Sure," Georgie moves the Admiral away from the webcam as he trots in front of her face.

"So it turns out Annabelle doesn't live there, she was just visiting that day. Very unfortunately for me. Martin does though."

"Neat, how fast did you boot it?"

Jon massages his brow, "You think so lowly of me. Every day you message me and I am cyberbullied. But no, we had dinner."

Jon first thinks that Georgie is lagging, as she remains unmoving for several dead silent seconds, eyes wide- finally snorting out barely contained laughter and rocking to the side, "Excuse me??? Wait, you're not- you're  _ serious _ ?"

Jon nods, morosely. "He was making spaghetti and I ended up staying. He's coming over to fix my balcony on Wednesday too." Jon frowns, realizing how bad this all sounds for his rather cold demeanor that Georgie will never let him uphold after this. "I need you to know, however, that I was reluctant."

"Thank you for clarifying that you still hate people, Jon."

"Don't make fun of me, I don't even like Martin, he's too nice."

"I can't believe this. Would you prefer Annabelle, then, as a neighbor? Seems far less 'nice' from your horror stories."

Jon imagines it, clearly aware she'd probably learn his schedule just to run into him in the mornings for shits and giggles.

"You're maybe a bit right."

"Mm, old news, Jonny-o. Also, I'm sure you absolutely have not by accident forgotten somehow, but I'd like to just clarify something."

"Shoot," Jon sighs.

"You're aware that Wednesday is tomorrow, yes?"

Jon glances down at his laptop's time and date corner, yes, Wednesday is tomorrow. He tells Georgie as much.

She nods along, speculatively, "Alright, then I assume you'd taken the time to make your apartment look at least partially presentable, yes?"

Jon's adrenal glands kick right into action, flooding his ribcage with icepick adrenaline.

"My apartment's fine." He says it with not an ounce of self-confidence. 

Georgie laughs and so Jon spends the next four hours shuffling residual moving boxes into his study where they will Not be seen, then dusting shelves he hasn't touched since moving in, and finally attempting to push his couch over a few inches so it's more centered against the wall (instead of the horrible off-center position it'd been for the entire month).

Meanwhile, Georgie supplies him with a consistent stream of monologue from where he'd perched his laptop. She rants about her shit on youtube getting copyright-claimed and how a fellow youtuber with a much bigger sub-count had stepped in on twitter to stand! against! corporate! with! her! Jon listens with little reaction, as when Georgie casually lapses into a story, it's not too adverse to a podcast. She has a pleasant voice it helps ebb the threat of  _ "you're about to have your frist ever guess over!!!"  _ panic in Jon. 

Time is utterly subjective.

This is only proven more factual as Wednesday evening takes millennia to arrive.

Jon is now hyper-conscious that Tim, who saw him zone out and put an eraser into his mouth instead of a grape, apparently knows Martin and regularly - _ he didn't say regularly. only occasionally. sometimes. rarely. but what if he was lying to make you feel better?  _ \- texts about Jon's misgivings as a barely adapting manager. The thought of it nearly propels Jon to pick some petty argument with Tim but the man's too sweet in an assholish way and Jon can't sincerely be mad at him. Sasha's more of a different story, but her competence means Jon will never complain about her work ethic. For now. 

So, Jon spends his hours at the library fixing the severely fucked up digital archive and trying to be a normal, polite coworker. Except, apparently, Wednesdays are full of damn surprises and their absentee boss decides exactly today to drop in.

It's decidedly not that awful, as he's rather jolly (even if in a demeaning kind of fashion) but literally any deviation from the norm will grate on Jon's fraying nerves. Jon's good with names - very good, in fact - but for the life of him cannot remember his employer's. He knows it's something banally simple, but judging by how Tim and Sasha refer to him as "Mr. Boss","Bossman", and "Aye Aye Captain", they somehow do not remember his name either. The man is seemingly unbothered by this and ghosts around the library for a few hours, occasionally looming over Jon's shoulder at the desktop which is atrocious work conduct, yet inescapable. 

By the end of his work hours, Jon feels dehydrated from anxiety-sweat and demoralized from Mr. Boss Captain Man's existence. He ignores the way Sasha and Tim uniformly eye him in the staff room  _ (did Martin tell them? How close are they as friends? Does Jon really have to skip town again? Wait what does Martin even have to tell them about Jon- oh the fucking flowers-) _ and heads home. 

The walk is mildly helpful. Jon devises about twenty different ways to go about conversation and tries to guess at what questions Martin might ask, so that he can memorize the answers beforehand and not trip over his own tongue. 

_ Hey, Jon, were these yarrows here when you moved in? _

_ Yes, Martin, they'd been passed down to me from the past tenants like some aborted blood-curse. _ (cool! dark! mysterious!)

_ Have you ever done gardening before? _

_ No, I prefer the less hands-on hobbies, even though I see nothing wrong with the activity and rather enjoy flowers.  _ (doesn't offend Martin's hobby! polite! shares small facts about yourself like other human people want to hear!)

_ Do you want me to cook for you again? _

_ Yes, Martin, I'd love that.  _ (casual! wait a fucking moment-

Jon physically stops on the sidewalk and barely escapes getting barrelled by an intimidating Karen with her twin baby-stroller.

One more time!

_ Do you want me to cook for you again? _

_ I'd hate to inconvenience.  _

Ok, that's better. Jon tries to think about something else on the way home. 

Martin appears eight and a half minutes later - which were eight and a half minutes Jon spent pacing his entire apartment from end to end. He knocks very politely and then smiles at Jon very politely and then makes a vague polite comment about Jon's flat, and heads for the balcony after asking permission. It's horrible how much good someone can just... Have. Jon frowns when Martin isn't looking and downs some more allergy meds.

"Alright, I'll take these yarrows off your shoulders, and I brought some replacements." Martin sets a bag of sturdy-looking young bushes in pots on the floor, "They're easy to care for and bloom rather often. You want the honor of naming these kids?"

That is not a question Jon had either

A) considered at all earlier

B) or prepared an answer for.

"S-sorry?"

Martin looks up at him, having retrieved a trowel, "The plants. I got these recently, so they're still nameless. You wanna name them?"

Jon blinks at the bushes with immediate panic.

"Hey, don't stress too much, it's not like they'll complain about any decision you make..." Martin waggles the trowel at Jon, "What's the first thing that comes to mind? Right off the top of your head."

"Castor and Pollux." Jon blurts out, staring at the nearly identical bushes.

Martin joins him in the staring. "Alright. Snazzy. Why though?"

"Um, Castor and Pollux were twin half-brothers in Greek mythology who ended up becoming the constellation Gemini."

Martin hums thoughtfully, "Valid." He begins moving his bags to the balcony, from which Jon strays a safe distance away. "How can you be twins but also half-brothers though?"

Jon considers summarizing in approximately three words, but Martin sounds genuinely interested and not just asking for the sake of conversation, so Jon allows himself to... go into a little more detail on the rather dramatic familial relations of Greek Gods. Martin digs yarrows out on his balcony and occasionally asks follow-ups, spiraling Jon into wholely separate rants. 

It's... oddly okay. Alright. Fine. ...Not bad.

Jon gets to talk forever, which is admittedly not something he's commonly allowed to do (please stop spamming me about albino cockroaches that live in cars, I do not need to or want to know about this) and Martin's actually an interactive listener, occasionally chipping in with life stories. Jon watches his back and shoulders, hands practiced and nonchalant with the gardening equipment.

Martin ties the yarrows into neat little bundles and then into a separate bag for insurance. He then deposits Castor and Pollux into the empty flower bed and begins collecting soil off the floor. Jon comes over with a broom. It's a good kind of silence now. 

"Oof! Haven't gotten to so severely remodel a garden in a while! If it turns out these give you side effects too, you know where to find me."

Jon finds himself smiling against his better efforts, "Yeah, I'll be sure to barge in on you cooking again and you'll burn your kitchen down by accident."

Martin giggles, "You and Annabelle have that in very unfortunate common," he pulls his phone out, "Here, text me or something."

Jon lags for a bit before realizing Martin's waiting for Jon to pull his phone out while Jon stares at the open palm of his hand, like an invitation.

"Right, right." Jon scrabbles for his phone, nearly dropping it and immediately catching it very ineffectively with his pointer and middle finger by the corner. He lets Martin copy his number, then receives a text with flower emojis. "Thanks for helping, I've been, hm, avoiding my windows for over a month now. Any way I could repay the favor?"

Martin smiles very disarmingly, "Come over for dinner?"

Jon blanks very very hard at this, which is a deeply unfamiliar state for him. Wait- he'd prepared for this exact question!:

"Yes, Martin, I'd love that."

_ Wait wrong fucking one you moron- that was the first one the failure one the social death by embarrassment one- _

Martin grins like he'd just won the sun, "Sweet! I have some dishes I've been meaning to try out. You think about it and hit me up with when you're free or hungry, I work from home anyway, so..." he loses a lot of his initial bravery and begins to go red, "Well, just, I don't know, tell me?"

Jon can't help but smile, both insanely flattered and equally suspicious of anyone even remotely polite. Martin falls under that category rather well and Jon is still attempting to catch glimpse of Martin's Evil Plans!! But there's nothing there but a very unconditional kind of gentleness and it's rather calming. 

Martin leaves with the yarrows and Jon promises himself that he will not be chicken and will absolutely, eventually, text Martin. 

But first, he needs to meet a whole new balcony. 


	3. the 4 a.m. kind of feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a nutshell, Jon looks too much into flower meanings and hates not knowing Everything about Martin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry there's been a gap in updates i may or may not have transcended into the death dimension thx to coursework
> 
> either way! hope you guys enjoy this one ~  
> huge shoutout to everyone whos been leaving comments! i read each one and each one brings a wobbly smiles to my face, lost of love to all you wonderful bastards

Jon, to his absolute surprise, only takes three hours of typing and retyping the same sentence before he can hit send. Regrettably, he has to suffer those three hours alone, as Georgie isn't replying, and that leaves him with only three other contacts to bother: Basira, Melanie, and Daisy, all three of whom could potentially turn it into character analysis at his expense, screenshot his plea and share it on twitter, or ignore the text for five days and then finally clown him about it later, respectively in the order mentioned.

The text is rather simple: _Castor and Pollux are good non-threatening company for morning coffee on the balcony, for which they and myself send thanks._

Supplemented by a picture of the new plants, taken at 5:30a.m. even though he only managed to send the two messages closer to 8. The more he looks at it now, the less sense grammatically it makes, like a word loses meaning after repeated one too many times. He screenshots it and forwards it to Georgie, following it up with more question marks than he usually would. 

Jon jiggles his leg at work, picking through the electronic archives again and sorting the tagging system. Tim drifts through his periphery a few times, very clearly staring at Jon until Jon finally snaps and makes direct eye contact back. Tim lifts his eyebrows and very inconclusively shrugs at Sasha across the library (who, it turns out, had also been watching, albeit more subtly). Jon is unsettled and uneasy and so abandons his desk to go sit in the staff room and pick through the complaints/suggestions box. This is also a part of his duties, the justification behind which he does not know. 

Martin replies at 10a.m. and Jon is very glad to put down a scribbled note about how the library is most definitely haunted down. He does not dive for his phone and very respectfully and sanely picks it up. 

_im glad your new roommates are agreeable~ tell them hi for me_

_Kanzas and Pewdiepie say hi too_

A picture of a sunflower and a few peonies (?) is sent right after, clearly from Martin's own garden. Jon sits back in his chair and counts to ten before answering.

_Is one of your flowers named PewDiePie...?_

Martin replies immediately which makes Jon feel a little better about himself and the constant itch under his skin to check his phone. 

_maybe._

_to be honest, people are usually more critical of Kanzas' name spelling. i'm happy to inform you you're the first to not remark on that :))_

Jon has to scroll up to check what the hell was wrong with Kansas. 

_Okay, now I'm twice as unsettled. I know Kansas' state flower is the sunflower but the z..._

Tim enters the room as Jon hits send, carrying his lunch. Jon angles his phone out of view for no particular reason aside from the petty need to uphold standards, like not texting your very polite neighbors at work. 

_well_

_tbh didn't expect you to know the state flower thing! maybe you are a secret gardener in disguise_

_the z is because annabelle named it and she's edgy like that_

_Pewdiepie, well, there's something called Felix Peonies and when I got peonies last season I really couldn't pass up the chance._

Jon flees the staff room as Tim sits down to eat because he's finding it extremely difficult to keep his face schooled. And he's talked enough with Tim to know that the man won't let it go unnoticed and then won't ever leave his alone about it.

_Fascinating_

Jon shoots the text off quickly and only belatedly realizes how that might read sarcastically... as someone who'd had the same pleasantry directed towards himself before with little ability to gauge its sincerity. Immediately follows it up:

_I realize that might sound rather sarcastic remotely and I'd want to assure you that is not the case, I rather like learning new things._

He wants to add something like 'please don't be mad at me' but that'd be too... um... uncalled for probably. Martin doesn't seem like the type to get angry easy but he's also been too calm in every situation so far to be completely useless in self defence... Jon frowns as he remembers Martin inviting Jon into his apartment with rather little regard for the fact Jon could've been some maniac. God, he really wants to learn about that. He really wants to learn about Martin.

_noted! i can spam plant facts anytime as i haven't known you for long enough to get annoying with them yet hehe_

Jon doesn't like relating to people too much but as someone who's been blocked multiple times after the recipient of his messages woke up to 58 notifications...

_Trust me, I doubt that can happen. May I request a daily plant-fact subscription please?_

Martin shoots back an affirmative and Jon's maybe kind of smiling, but when the text asking for daily random world-facts appears directly after, Jon has to smother his grin by physically clapping a hand over his mouth. 

Jon agrees to provide daily facts too as part of the exchange. Martin soon makes his goodbyes, saying he needs to go get working. Jon will need to find out who he works as, seeing that he'd presumably woken up at 10a.m.

Jon stares at a row of encyclopedias for a few seconds to collect himself and goes back to work in mildly (very much) higher spirits. 

When his lunch rolls around, Jon sees a bunch of texts from Georgie and diligently sits down with his 7-11 sandwich to catch up. 

_sry was callig friend n then fell sleep_

_shes so cool ;-; rmeind me to tell u later_

This is followed by a few rows of laughing emojis as she must have finally seen Jon's pain from the morning. 

_om g i just checked the time stampts... honey it took u...hours/??? to send a text,, fuck u are so poor_

Jon texts her with one hand, half-eaten sandwich in the other: _What do you mean I'm poor, I am paying for a good apartment in a good house. Barely but I am._

_sry i meant uh little poor u_

_that type of poor_

_bby_

_1 person is nice to u and u die_

_Georgie, many people are nice to me, as you have pointed out I inspire severe pitty in strangers. Also, as a person who's being very gay for some YouTuber who got into a Twitter war to defend you (aka 1 person being nice) I don't want to hear your criticism._

_ignored! i am not gay for melanie!_

_and wait does this mean u r gay for martin_

_It does not._

Jon's brain is rather eager to grab onto that line of thought and derail his life but then he catches the name that Georgie had mentioned.

_Wait, Melanie King?_

_um,,,, ye? hows it feel like to know ur ex is friends w a CELEBRITY/??_

_I never believed Melanie about how many subscribers she had... Probably should've checked but not believing her always riled her up so bad..._

_w8_

_w8 w8 w8_

_jon_

_Yes?_

_jon u know melanie like in.. person..?_

Jon smiles down at his phone, this time tinged with smugness, finishing his lunch.

_Met her at the law firm I used to work with, she came in because her team had trespassed onto some old hospital's grounds. She hated me so much she invited me to be a guest on the show._

_ur kidding_

_u r kidding yes??_

_jon_

_Sorry, my break is over, I need to go._

_dont do this to me_

For all the comedic timing of it, Jon really does need to get back to work. He does not let himself check his phone until his shift's over, which usually is not a self-restrainment kind of problem, but the knowledge of Martin's number in his contact gallery is somehow a gateway drug for wanting to check his messages. As they begin closing up, Tim and Sasha wink at Jon on their way out (concerning, horrible) and vanish in the direction of the nearest coffee shop, holding hands. This means Jon cannot grab coffee after work which is a tragedy. 

He settles for buying one of those refrigerated Starbucks cans of coffee from the grocery store along with microwavable mashed potatoes and some chocolate chip cookies. Georgie'd texted him a few times, threatening him to elaborate about Melanie before finally telling him she'd asked Melanie herself and that he should rest assured she still hates him in a friendly way. Martin's also texted. 

It's, endearingly enough, some memes. Jon tries to not walk into any phone poles. 

He gets home and opens his balcony door and windows, sinks into his couch with dinner, pulling up YouTube and his playlist of documentaries to watch. It's significantly better than hiding in his bedroom, where the wifi is bad and the air circulation is worse. The bushes on his balcony are budding and he wonders what the flowers will look like. One more day, then the weekend. There's soft guitar music coming from somewhere outside and Jon dozes off on his couch in the soft summer breeze.

Jon wakes up itchy from mosquito bites.

It's a very unfortunate 4a.m. dark silence and his screen is playing a victorian portrait restoration tutorial video, courtesy of wretched autoplay. Jon rubs crust out of his eyes and gets up after rolling sideways to best avoid his neck and back killing him instantly with couch-sleep pain. 

Jon doesn't feel too much like a real person and finds his fridge without turning the lights on, drinking orange juice from the carton, and then discovers two-day-old cheese sticks in a greasy take-out box. Seeing as he'd fallen asleep at around 9p.m. he doesn't see the point of crashing back into unconsciousness and instead sits on his balcony, slowly eating. 

He hadn't been as averse to uprooting his life and moving to a different, much smaller town, than Basira had warned about. Admittedly, Jon does miss some of the anonymity that comes with more populated areas but this isn't much-deserted either.. He'd just gotten much more familiar with the people here than maybe another job would provide. Now he just recognizes people who frequent the library, mostly. 

It's nice. He's happy he isn't being investigated for second-degree murder anymore and instead sometimes gets supportive texts from the two detectives that were ready to incarcerate him. His old landlord's in jail, he's gotten minor compensation from the court, he's got most of his stuff packed and moved quickly, and now he's got an okay flat. He's happy he made the move when he did. Specifically that he decided to dig through the yarrows when Martin and Annabelle had been having tea out on their balcony. 

Jon goes back inside and slinks around his apartment, taking a long-deserved shower, and considers trimming his hair in the bathroom mirror. Ultimately decides against it, not trusting his impulsivity and mildly tremoring hands. Sits down with coffee to watch the sunrise and texts Martin.

_Daily unneeded information: Lost, the TV show, ran an ARG campaign between seasons in 2006 which spanned commercials, websites, and newspapers, as well as a grocery-available fake chocolate bar._

Jon is about to close the chat when Martin replies, which is like being doused in cold water. Jon was expecting to just leave the fact to float around in Martin's phone until whenever he woke up at 10 again.... and had not counted on being immediately interacted with at.... 5a.m. 

_ooo very cool I will read into that... my mom used to watch Lost a lot._

_plant fact! flower language that extends to full bouquets means that you can tell someone 'ur personality soils ur beauty' by sending them day lily, broken straw, columbine, witch hazel, and coloured daisy~_

_first thing that came to mind, no clue why you'd ever need that though_

Jon stares at his phone for a few moments, double-checking what time it is, suddenly certain it's later in the day albeit a solar eclipse is going on or eternal darkness is just the new norm. No, 5a.m. He reckons he shouldn't be too surprised, some people are early risers too... Hell knows, Daisy used to wake up specifically before the birds could start chirping outside (which meant 4a.m.).

_Mm, flower language has always been rather intriguing._

_Out of curiosity, are you always awake this early?_

Nosy nature or not.... Jon awaits an answer.

_my schedule's not the most consistent, so no, I just got caught up baking, hehe._

_omg do you want some??_

Jon considers himself, hair still damn, wearing old pajama pants with nearly threadbare knees, and a shirt Basira had gotten him- it says "lasagnya" in times new roman. He does not want to be seen.

_I'm not the most equipped to be a guest now, I suppose, but the concept of bakery sounds alluring._

There's a few moments of silence until Jon hears a faint "Hey are you there?" stage-whispered into the night. 

He almost drops his mug, "Martin, is that you?" Jon lightly peers over his balcony railing and hopes the lack of lights in his apartment masks him well.

"Yep! Okay, let's keep it down so whoever the poor soul living between us is won't wake up."

Jon leans his elbows on the railing and sips his coffee, "Alright, Martin."

"Do you have a rope? Or like... some kind of cord you could lower?" Martin whispers back up at him loudly. 

Jon blanks, "Um... I'll go look." He steps back into his apartment and flips his phone flashlight on. It takes digging through three boxes to find a roll of thick fishing line he'd inherited from Daisy. Jon jogs back to the balcony after grabbing one of those beer-bottle opener magnets from his fridge, "I got something that would work, Martin you still there?"

"Yeah, lower it, I'll tell you when I get it."

Jon ties the magnet to the end for weight and begins to methodically feed the fishing line into the darkness under his balcony. It takes a while but eventually Martin confirms getting the magnet and Jon can feel the line get gently tugged.

"Alright, you can retrieve your cinnamon rolls, just slowly and carefully!"

"Thank you, Martin," Jon begins to pull on the line and feels the severely altered weight of it, almost hurting his fingers. "How much did you tie on? This is heavier than I'd trust bakery to be."

"It's not too bad!" Martin quietly exclaims, "Plus, I don't know what you have at home, so I packed a full breakfast set. Annabelle's affinity to dropping in randomly on top of the weekends means all my recipes are saved for two-or-more people portions...."

Jon smiles at the partially defensive ranting, "I cannot complain, seeing as I am being very graciously treated to home cooking," he finally pulls the bag into view: a canvas bag with something printed on it. "Alright, I got the bag, thank you once more..."

"No problem! Also, don't worry about returning the bag, I have too many as it is and everyone's threatening me to get rid of some... Well, I'll be turning in for the night soon, have a nice day at work!" Martin calls lightly from the darkness and Jon calls back a good night, holding the warm bag to his chest, the bakery already seeping its warmth through the container inside. He hears Martin's balcony door shut and steps back into his own house. It's getting light outside and so he ends up never flicking the lamp on either way. 

There's a tupperware container full of cinnamon buns in the bag along with a glass bottle of Dole apple juice, the good kind, and a bag of fresh grapes. There's also a flower there and it's rather very far too sweet so Jon sets everything down and walks around his apartment a few times with a face completely void of any reaction but chest keen to catching his breaths. He doesn't recognize the flower and snaps a picture of it, sending it to both Georgie and Basira in hopes they might know. 

He tries one of the pastries right there, standing barefoot in his kitchen with the lights off as the morning rays finally begin outlining the world in oranges. It's heavenly, fresh to the point of burning his mouth. 

Jon hadn't pinned Martin for the night owl type, but he supposes when you work from home, it's a given one's schedule might fall apart. Does that mean Martin's self-employed? Or someone with deadlines but no office-hours? Jon begins getting ready for work. When he's back in the kitchen, dressed and combed(ish), the sun's crawled over the city horizon and Jon sees the bag's graphic print of a bunny in glasses giving thumbs up. It's not something he'd be seen with in public so he moves the tupperwear into his work bag, as well as the juice and grapes. 

The walk to the library in fresh morning air is somehow much shorter and lighter than Jon's used to and it's oddly strange, rolling into Friday with rather a lot of energy. Must be courtesy of waking up almost an hour and a half early. He knows the library doesn't need to open this early, but he prefers arriving places with a lot of time to spare anyway, and he likes to engage in some reading himself, browsing the endless collections. That and a university student had very politely asked Jon if he could come in on the mornings to work sometimes. Jon doesn't mind his strange yet unobtrusive company and so opens up the library early for the kid. For someone who looks plucked straight out of an MCR moshpit, he's very mannered and minds his business. 

Jon sits at his desk and eats another bun, sending Martin a text to once more express his unending gratitude at the bakery. Georgie replies (garbled, having just woken up) about how the flower looks familiar but she doesn't have the name off the top of her head.

Basira replies a bit later, saying she very much does not recognize the flower. Jon's about to let it slide and absolutely not let this hang on his mind for days, when Basira follows it up with:

_Nevermind, Daisy just looked over my shoulder. She says it's a 'clarkia'._

Jon thanks them both and abstains from asking why and how Daisy just knows that. He switches apps and looks up Clarkia flower language meaning. There is a colossal, vast probability that he is looking too much into this. Because what probably happened was that Martin plucked a random flower from his balcony garden. Or, even more likely: it fell in by accident! Yes.

Google tells him that Clarkias stand for: _Your company and converse delight me._

He must be reading too much into this. Must be. 

Tim and Sasha come in to work, wave at Jon, and look downright terrified when he waves back. Then Jon learns that their boss is making an appearance today - which will make it one time more than usual, or really needed during a week. Jon frantically looks up some name variations on Facebook to see if he can find what his damned employer is called after all: _Luke Patterson?_ _Lucian Peter_. Neither. He tries looking up the actual library but both the official website and every other mention are devoid of any names mentioned. It bothers Jon and he goes to replace the returned books with mild force. The unsettled feeling he gets from not knowing something fades away quickly when lunch comes around and Jon gets to experience fresh fruit, baked goods, and quality juice. It's like he's living someone else's life for a moment - and Jon knows that he could feasibly buy all the same things, but there's ease in routine. 

The boss's presence barely dampens his mood after that, even as the man stands over Tim (within Jon's earshot, sadly) and mansplains about maritime star-telling, and then about the wicked routine of some hitman he had to transport overseas once. Jon wonders if it's something he's missing context for or the man really is, on top of owning a library, also a seaman.

He sends Martin two horror stories about what states books have been turned in in and then replies to Georgie's belated

_IT'S CLARKIES_

With

_I know now, but thank you._

The workday ends and Jon takes the long way home, circling the local park. He finishes the last of the cinnamon buns while walking and it's delightful. He's usually fueled by corporate hatred when writing (his landlord sparked a good fifty thousand words out of Jon in writing) but now he's almost drawn to try his hand at less existential prose again. It's interrupted by a familiar itchiness behind his eyes and Jon catches the wave of rather all-too recognizable flowers from a few meters off. It's freshly planet yarrows and Jon very quickly swerves away and in the opposite direction. It's almost endearing that Martin couldn't throw some flowers out and had to replant them instead... But isn't digging on public property like, illegal? It has to be. Jon wonders if he did it in the dead of night again.

Again... Damn, what the hell does Martin do? Jon suddenly is washed over the head with a very bad idea indeed, chased by the phantom works of Luke whatever Paterson or something mentioning the hitman.

It matches. Jon stops in the middle of the street involuntarily, eyes wide and very very shocked at not having just REALIZED sooner. Of course... Who else would hang out with people like Annabelle (horrible) and who else invites strangers into their home, unafraid?? Someone who's sure in their own defense/offense systems! Who stays up hella late (doing illegal things!) aside from - of course - professional killers? And that's why Martin probably has SHOVELS available! And what if he buried a body under the yarrows? Body cover up! Jon rushes home, texting Georgie a very fast: _Oh my god Martin is an assassin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah yes s2 Jon's classic  
> 'someone's nice to me ... probably means they are INSANE' logic
> 
> so it looks like this is getting extended by a chapter bcs i realized this one was getting wicked long in comparison   
> alas, even after this one's over ill probably do some more fics in the same series cause i might've gotten attached,,,,, VIBIN


	4. apparently a whole lot of running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has a rather peculiar breakdown. It's funny (- Annabelle).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay guess WHICH dumbass is extending this by ANOTHER chapter like some idiot? Me. i just keep finding things to add and the next thing i know it's hours later and i have yet another chapter. and it's not the last one. 
> 
> well. let's roll.   
> maybe i love annabelle so WHAT like you're any different wtf.

Jon bangs his fist on Martin’s door in rapid, manic succession. It takes surprisingly long for Martin to answer, long enough that Jon begins coming out of the scatter-brain exhilaration of running all the way back to his house. Begins feeling it replaced with the adrenaline of fear instead of the adrenaline that comes with an epiphany. And then Martin jerks the door open, looking terrified for a moment and then deeply worried – for some reason wearing different glasses, Jon notices and hates noticing.

“ _Jon?”_

Jon swallows, immediately swamped for words, then jabs his finger in Martin’s face, “I’ve _got_ you!”

Martin looks over Jon and then vaguely squints, “Yeah…? Guess you do?”

“What? No, I’ve cracked your cover! You’re a contract killer!” Jon cheers, like he’s just solved the world’s most controversial cold case, “You’re living in a small apartment for a cover! And you took forever to answer because you were asleep after a night of sawing up bodies into small bits in your bathtub so you could sneak them out of your apartment! Ha! I’ve figured you out! I know who you are! You’ve been careful! But not careful enough!” Jon is practically dancing in place with how much he’s accentuating each word with his whole body, “Won’t let anything get in your way, will you?” Jon exclaims, then his face falls, “Wait this means you’ll have to kill me too-” he stumbles a few steps back, away, “You’ll kill me to keep your cover- _SHIT.”_ A deep kind of primal fear sparks through Jon, immediately realizing the rather compromised situation he’d walked into on behalf his own dumb curiosity and need to be right.

“Jon, I’m-”

He throws himself down the hallway at break-neck speed, flying down the staircase three steps at a time, breaking out into the street and booting it down the road- he hasn’t run like this since being chased by Daisy’s largeass dog as she laughed. He speeds past houses, dodging into random alleyways, somehow convinced that it’ll make Martin’s tracking down of him harder, and he’s a few blocks away when the lack of proper exercise finally beats the adrenaline. Jon stumbles to a stop, coming close to face-planting into the dingy alleyway’s floor. His soles hurt and his chest burns, sweat making hair plaster to his neck and forehead. Jon leans against a wall, heaving, and pulls up his phone with all intentions to call the police or witness protection services right fucking _now_ because confronting was Martin exceedingly dumb – he now realizes after the excitement of something interesting wears off – especially since he lives in the same goddamn building. He needs to wait it out tonight, sneak back home later, grab money and maybe a knife or something…

There are a slew of missed calls, Georgie, Martin, Basira, and somehow Melanie. This derails Jon’s original panic-induced decision-making and he calls Georgie back almost on instinct.

_Jon? Jon, what the everloving fuck is going on?_

Jon sinks down to crouch, legs begging for rest, “Georgie, Martin is a killer. I’ve confronted him about it and I am now on the run.”

_Did you eat edibles by accident again?_

“I did not-” Jon remembers the cinnamon buns. “- god, what if he drugged me?”

_Are you in immediate danger RIGHT now?_

Jon looks around, and reasons that if he has no idea where he is right now, Martin can probably not find him with ease either. “No.”

_Okay, can you please walk me through what happened?_

“I found a fresh grave that Martin-”

_Woah, woah, okay, you did WHAT now?_

“He’d dug up a patch of the park. Planted yarrows on top.”

Georgie instructs him to go sit in a McDonalds or something before it gets dark as he continues explaining all his evidence frantically and cupping his free hand around the phone and his mouth. Jon orders nuggets, coffee, and a milkshake and holes up in the farthest corner he can find, finally finishing his detailed account of the last few days.

Georgie’s silent on the other side for a little.

_Um. God, I regret being on good terms with you so much. I love you but you’re testing me right now._

“You don’t believe me.”

_I don’t not. But I also am sure there are better, less threatening explanations. So what that he was awake at ass-o-clock? I remember your sleeping schedule in college._

“He has a nice apartment and nice clothes! He has nice glasses and plates, Georgie! He definitely gets money from somewhere. And why the fuck was he nice to me, huh? He offered to replant my balcony because he wanted to scope out my apartment.” Jon bores holes in his coffee by staring at it like the reflection of himself he can see in the surface is to blame. “Gauge how dangerous I was to his plans…”

_People can be nice._

“Sure. But mark my words, I knew something was up with him! I just couldn’t pin it, my mind’s been reeling, I’ve been thinking about him for days, and now I know I was subconsciously piecing together the details, Georgie. Never call me unobservant again.”

She tells him to sit it out in a rather skeptical tone and disappears for her night-shift. Jon texts Basira asking for legal advice but it’s past midnight so she’s most likely asleep. The McDonalds is open 24 hours and the customers slowly shift from families and friends to the more rare crowd of dark hours. Jon makes eye contact with some disheveled woman in a red dress who walks in at around 1a.m., shambling a little. She frowns at him and he frowns back, feeling scrutinized. She disappears from view, going to order something.

Jon finishes his milkshake and starts on the coffee, shuffling his bag around a bit, feeling the edges of the container from the cinnamon buns dig into his shin. He slowly tears up a napkin, bouncing his leg and frowning the more he thinks: something’s definitely wrong with him. Jon likes to think he is a man of good decisions. He can make them clearheaded and calm. He can weigh the pros and cons, can seek compromise. Jon also likes writing horror and has an affinity of ‘checking the scary noise’ behavior. Georgie has in detail pinned both of these behaviors as the reasons for his general problems in life. Martin is a problem. He is a list of details that do not match up (unless, you take the very reasonable justification of his murderous occupation). He is spontaneous with intent and Jon hates being unable to practically write out the future. It’s a loss of control and it’s a loss of control that wears soft jumpers and invites him for spaghetti.

_Your company and converse delight me._

What the hell does that mean then, huh? Jon thinks about the flower. God, it’s going to wilt in his apartment as he goes on the run. Maybe he can reason with Martin. Was the gardening bit all a guise? Does Martin the hitman genuinely like plants? Will he let Jon live under the pretense of keeping the clarkia alive? Jon needs to play all his cards well. Right, George lives too far away, so do Basira and Daisy… Melanie is closer but she’s also far less likely to make a night trip to a different city. And if he does somehow get her to come pick him up, she probably won’t shut up about it forever. And she has – apparently – a big enough fanbase to make Jon recognizable on the streets. But he’ll need the rest of his money and a change of clothes and a few other things from his apartment. So he has to get in alone. God, he has to find his way home on his own-

Jon pulls out his phone to check his GPS. It’s a lot of walking. At night. He’s not doing that. He’ll have to stay here until sunrise, that’s only a few hours away, okay. That’s reasonable.

Someone sits down at his table which is not right because the establishment is rather empty.

Jon looks up and almost falls out of his chair. It’s Annabelle.

She’s going to finish what Martin couldn’t do-

“Don’t scream.”

Jon snaps his mouth shut.

She sighs and looks him up and down, then to the side- Jon follows her gaze and the woman in the red dress is hanging around by the corner. Annabelle nods at her, _it’s him,_ and turns back to Jon.

It feels like several pairs of eyes are studying him just with the intensity of her gaze.

“I love idiot men. Relax, we’re in public.”

Jon slowly sits back down in his chair, having been half out of it but frozen like deadly levels of electricity were being passed through him. Annabelle folds her hands.

“I have been awoken from my nap and have pulled on many of my strings to locate a sad man in a McDonalds with very little leads on his location. Do not make this difficult for myself or Martin.”

“ _Strings-_ so you really _are_ mafia-”

“I am a needleworker, Martin is a youtuber, and you’re a meme.”

This maybe kind of pulls every carpet out from under Jon’s feet. “E-excuse me?”

Annabelle levels him with a cold kind of amusement, “Which do you want elaboration on?” God, she’s enjoying this isn’t she?

“Um, but the fresh grave-”

“The what, Jon?”

He doesn’t like it when she says his name.

“The yarrows in the park-”

“Martin suffers from too much compassion and couldn’t throw them out. Next, no he is not a ‘contract killer’. I cannot believe I have to explain this or even be here at all, but his schedule is fucked up because he works in bouts of inspiration for his videos. I do not understand how you came to your conclusions or why you ran in a random direction and decided to hide out in a fastfood restaurant – which did not make my job of locating you easier – but if it wasn’t _me_ here at 3a.m. I think I’d find this very funny.”

Jon stares at her and kind of wonders if this is all a huge coverup. Annabelle must, somehow, see this and sighs so deeply it’s like there’s metric tons of lung-space in her chest. "Don't believe me?" She pulls out her phone and after tapping at it a few times, slides it over to Jon. There’s a youtube channel pulled up. Jon stares at it, hugely averse to touching the object at all and so Annabelle reaches her hand over (not any better, objectively) and scrolls for him. Most of the thumbnails are unified by an inviting pastel-ish aesthetic and the even more inviting smile of Martin. Jon blinks. Annabelle keeps scrolling down all the way to 2009 and then back up, hitting one at random and for emphasis clicking through it: an intro, gardening tips, a merch shoutout – Jon recognizes the fucking bunny from the tote bag in his room design, _god that was old merch?_ – and then exits.

“In case you do not feel horrible enough yet,” Annabelle retrieves her phone and types something in, the click of her nails against the screen unsettling, “I think you’ll be happy to see a stream highlight someone recorded from Martin yesterday. Today.” She shows him the phone again, this time with a video of Martin in a headset, facing slightly off-camera with a controller in his hands, mid-sentence. He’s then interrupted by a pounding on his door which takes him a while to notice.

Jon can feel the onset of a deep, bone-heavy cringe bleeding into his body. Once Martin registers the sound past his headphones he jumps up and runs off-frame, the chat erupting with ‘what happened?’ ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Guys what is going on…’

_I’ve got you!_

_Yeah…? Guess you do?_

_What? No, I’ve cracked your cover! You’re a contract killer! You’re living in a small apartment for a cover! And you took forever to answer because you were asleep after a night of sawing up bodies into small bits in your bathtub-_

Jon pauses the video, “Okay, I think that’s very much enough.” The video is titled _martn-bee assaulted by crazy neighbor while streaming._

This is when Jon’s phone begins to buzz: Melanie calling. This is not common. Annabelle sits back, looking like she’s fully ready to listen in on his conversation. Jon picks it up like its poisonous.

“…Jonathan Sims speaking.”

_Jon please tell me I’m not hearing your voice in the crazy neighbor video? Please tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about._

He sits there silently, feeling Annabelle’s eyes on him.

_Jon, I love your voice, I’d think I’d recognize it after having to edit two hours of voice-over recording into a twenty minute video. Tell me I’m not hearing you in the crazy neighbor meme._

“Good evening, Melanie. It... seems that you aren’t mistaken.”

She hangs up. Jon lowers his phone slowly. This is unexpected and somehow more jarring than finding out your neighbor who you were considering inviting for coffee is an assassin and then is not- or not coffee, that’s not mandatory.

“Can we go?” Annabelle regards him with the same amusement, albeit dampened with the customary look of someone only recently woken up. “I’d rather crash at Martin’s as soon as physically possible.”

Jon nods, kind of in a trance and they stand up together. Annabelle leads him out of the building and into the surprisingly cool night air. Jon shivers, having not dressed for this and having also been drenched in sweat for a few hours. God… This person has seen him twice only and both times…

“How’d you find me?” Jon walks with her – to where, he can’t begin to guess.

“Martin called me after half an hour of searching for you around the block. Absolutely to flex, but I have a lot of followers. So then I posted your picture on twitter and said that anyone who could locate you would get a free embroidery giveaway. And worms_unite there recognized you.”

Jon bristles, “You _what-”_

Annabelle side-eyes him, “Do you have a problem with being found? Didn’t think so.” She didn’t even give him time to answer… Jon hates her. They turn the curb and there’s a motorcycle there. Jon feels his gut drop.

“I’d rather walk.”

“Well I would rather not.” Annabelle tosses Jon an extra helmet, one with a smatter of scratches on the temple which is bloodchilling. But she’s already getting onto the thing and Jon curses everything that has brought him to this point. Mainly: himself. But the universe a bit too.

Something hits him: “Wait, how’d you get a picture of me-”

Annabelle jerks them onto the road. Jon clutches on and tries to breathe.

When they stop at Jon’s apartment, she has to physically remove him from around her middle and then drags him up the stairs basically by the back of his shirt – which is hugely unnecessary but her hand is in a vice grip and she doesn’t even look at him. Jon stumbles along, coming onto a landing two floors earlier than his own apartment is, as she stops at Martin’s door and raps her knuckles. Martin opens it so quickly her hand’s still hanging in the air.

“You could’ve called you found him!”

“Sure,” Annabelle steps into Martin’s flat, not leaving Jon a choice but to find his footing and follow her.

Martin, back in his normal glasses, closes the door, his face set on a soft kind of worry, “Jon, I’m so sorry-”

Annabelle finally deposits Jon in the middle of the room, “Don’t apologize to him for the problems he creates.” She then turns to Jon, “Don’t create problems. I’m going to go shower and crash.”

Martin and Jon stand in the living room, Jon hugging his bag to his chest and Martin with his hands hovering, like he’s sure if he should be doing something. It’s a very stressful kind of silence as Jon avoids eye contact, hunching in on himself and wondering why he couldn’t just go back to his cold, miserable apartment and instead got shoved here into the cozy one- and then the sound of the shower starts up and Martin seems to break out of his trance.

“Hey are you… alright? You sort of vanished, and I thought maybe you were, um, I don’t know, you weren’t answering.” He approaches, losing the mild edge to his voice, “Come on," Martin gestures to the kitchen, "do you want tea?”

“Coffee please.” Jon mumbles out and Martin nods, turning to go into the kitchen that certainly doesn’t contain saws for butchering his victims… Jon follows him absently. He watches Martin’s wide back as he moves along his kitchen, retrieving mugs. The smell of coffee saturates the air and Jon, who’s been living on shitty instant coffee for a while, breathes it in, having missed the better ends of caffenianation.

“It’s brewing,” Martin turns to him, hands doing that floaty thing again. “Do you want to sit down?”

Jon gets kind of lost staring at Martin, feeling rather out of place having so swiftly waltzed into the lives of these people. He snaps back to focus and nods, sliding into one of the chairs- he’d eaten dinner here not too long ago. He becomes aware of the bag he’s still crushing in a death-grip, like some echo of holding onto Annabelle for dear life. “Um, I guess I’ve brought your container back?” He retrieves it and holds it out, the crumbs of Martin’s bakery still present.

This breaks whatever delicate trance had been hanging in the room, Martin laughs, none of Annabelle’s exhaustion in his features, and tries to hide it behind his hand, reaching out with the other to take the container. His fingers are warm where they brush against Jon’s and Jon is made very conscious of how cold he is once more.

“Thank you, Jon. That was a convoluted way of returning me tupperware but thank you none the less.” He puts it on the counter and then brings over a mug of coffee for Jon. It’s printed with an over-realistic drawing of the characters from Sesame Street.

Jon almost burns his hands against it but holds it anyway to absorb some of the warmth. “Martin I’m…. sorry about that. I don’t know what got into me.” His reflection stares back up at him from the mug once more. God, he looks like he’s been put through a carwash. In a bad way.

Martin sits across from him with a mug of tea. This one with a UFO on it. “Well, if it’s any consolation, my life has been exceedingly more interesting with your involvement in it. I won’t elaborate on if positively or negatively so.” He smiles as he speaks, a soft, comforting kind of thing, and Jon realizes he’s not scared of if Martin hates him now. Because… well- he _probably_ doesn’t, right? Shit.

“You don’t hate me, do you?” Jon blurts it out, sending ripples in his coffee.

Martin hums in question, “I don’t see what for I could hate you..?”

Oh that’s such a damning way to phrase it. What does that mean? That’s so vague. That’s too universal. He’s bound to learn something about Jon eventually, that will never hold up.

“Well, um, I’ve accused you of manslaughter, barging into your life – and as I’ve been informed, into your, um, live video? And um, well, you’re up now and I’m making you make me coffee?” Jon’s not really shaking but he’s curling in a bit, tensing, tries to stop it and counter-act the motion. This is fine, he’s went through rough patches with all four of his friends, it doesn’t work otherwise. This is okay.

God, it’s 4a.m.

Martin’s palm settles gently over Jon’s hand and it makes his chest erupt with adrenaline, like the first fall of a rollercoaster.

“Jon, it’s okay. A bit… out of the blue, but okay. I offered to make you tea and I did stay up with the full knowledge I’d set Annabelle on you and was going to have to, erm, deal with the damage. I’m sorry if she’s left any psychological trauma, she was a last resort.”

Jon stares at Martin’s hand and kind of feels like crying.

“I usually make better decisions.”

Jon feels Martin’s shrug more than sees it, “Well, I’d like to claim the same for myself, but I have my moments too.”

It surprisingly goes a long way to settle his nerves, knowing he’s not in some Perfect Household of the Perfect Tenant. “Okay.”

Martin retracts his hand and it’s suddenly all the more colder where it was. “Are you hungry?”

Jon finally takes a sip of his coffee. Shit, it’s good. “I’m afraid not,” He finally looks up at Martin and he’s so pretty when he smiles, and when he doesn’t too. In general. All the time.

Annabelle appears in their periphery and both look over.

“I’m sleeping in the guest room. Figure it out.” She vanishes, wearing what _has_ to be Martin’s clothes.

Martin must notice because he grumbles out a, ‘I’m putting a padlock on my closet,’ which Jon hears and doesn’t manage to restrain a chuckle about.

“Got some skeletons in there?” Jon ventures, testing the waters of how much he can joke in the company of someone who he recently accused of crime, apparently, in front of a huge audience.

Martin chuckles again and Jon wonders if it’s just easy to make him laugh in general. “No, just soft clothes that are apparently a huge invitation to be stolen.” He tilts his head a bit, smile not letting up even a moment, “With all due respect, you look in need of a shower.”

Jon sputters, feeling his face heat up and hating every second of it, “Shit, yeah probably- do you want me to go?”

Martin nods his head to where Annabelle had disappeared earlier, “You can use mine,” he looks back at Jon, “But I’m not keeping you here, you can leave if you want to, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

No man has ever faced a harder choice: social convention or gut feeling. Jon, lighting-fast, reasons that Martin has not known him in any light of social convention at all ever, and so he finds himself closing his eyes under a rain of hot water in Martin’s bathroom. Somehow, he’d shouted at his friend, then marathonned more distance than preferable, ruminated in a McDonalds, experienced his first and _hopefully_ last motorcycle ride, and he’s strangely keyed up either way, like when one stays up too far into a night and loses the ability to feel tired. He showers and climbs out, finding his glasses and wiping them of mist, staring with disdain first at the sweaty clothes he’d appeared in and then at the mirror. He really should cut his hair sometime. Or at least even it out at the ends. And shave. And fix his diet and maybe get more sunlight. Martin had given him a change of clothes and it’s baffling that Jon, realistically, could’ve just gone up to his own apartment and gotten himself a change.

But somehow, maybe, Jon thinks, both of them knew that if Jon was allowed to leave, his better judgment (if that existed) would’ve caught up and he would’ve made some excuse about being tired or something, and wouldn’t have come back.

It’s a criminally soft sweater made to look like a calm seashore and a pair of some sweat pants. Jon has to, for once in his life, agree with Annabelle’s insistence on raiding Martin’s wardrobe. The sweater is giant on him and Jon revels in completely hiding his hands in the sleeves as he steps out of the bathroom, hair damp and looking mildly more lively. Martin’s washing dishes in the sink. When he looks up, Jon’s ready to die on the spot from being examined for whatever reason, but Martin just goes a bit red and smiles at him, “Are you sleepy or do you want to watch something?”

“It’s rather late, would that be okay with you?” Jon hovers in the middle of the living room, intensely called by the desire to sit down on the couch. He eyes his unfinished coffee and Martin somehow notices, bringing it over as he approaches.

“Oh, nonsense. This is like middle school sleepovers all over again!”

Jon’s never had any and is rather alright starting right now. He accepts the mug and follows Martin to curl into the couch. He’s trying to catch up to the transition from thinking his life was in mafia-related danger to confirming that yes, he would like to rewatch Inception, making it his third time and Martin’s fifth.

Jon’s fully on the couch, knees curled up to the side, sipping his coffee, and he knows the forecast had warned about a temperature drop but this is mildly ridiculous. He can feel warmth almost radiating from Martin and by the time Leonardo DiCaprio is going through his allotted character development, Jon’s managed to _very_ subtly, in his opinion, end up pressed into Martin’s side. He concludes that it’s been done subtly because it is not remarked on, and by the time the movie’s over, Martin has his arm around his shoulder, which makes Jon feel that same prickling in his ribcage. Martin also doesn’t let go as they argue about if DiCaprio was still dreaming in the end or if it was real life, Jon waving his hands as he reasons that the real totem was the wedding ring all along, and Martin poking his palm where it’s being waved, and saying that in previous instances, when he’d spun the little totem throughout the movie, it hadn’t remained stable for as long as it did in the final shot, meaning he’s in limbo. Jon rests his head on Martin’s shoulder, staring at the coffee table in anger and bringing up interviews with the director about how _fine_ maybe the ending is _meant_ to be ambiguous. Martin won’t hear any of it, jabbing Jon in the shoulder where his hand rests, and arguing that literary ambiguity isn’t an excuse for a plot’s inconclusiveness.

It’s light outside and their conversation transitions into a much less heated argument about which of Leonardo DiCaprio’s roles should’ve gotten him an Oscar fast and easy. Jon begins feeling himself getting sucked into the allure of sleep, deciding to briefly rest his eyes as Martin quietly reasons that the movie Shutter Island is a rarely mentioned masterpiece.

Jon wakes up ten hours later.

He’s so heavily disoriented, he almost falls off the couch. His phone is dead and he can’t tell what time it is, or _where_ it is for a moment, frantically looking around the room for a clock before realizing that the task is as difficult as it is because he’s missing glasses. They’re on the coffee table and Jon shoves them onto his face. It’s five thirty p.m. The clock is dinosaur themed.

Jon sits up, feeling his back whine, but far less so than his own couch would warrant. Right, he’s not in his apartment.

_Oh god, he’s in Martin’s._

Jon looks around the room once more, this time far more urgently, and sees Annabelle at the kitchen table, earbuds in and watching something on her laptop while eating crispies. Jon laments the loss of his phone and contemplates going back to sleep just to escape interacting with her- too late, she hasn’t moved but her eyes have flicked over, watching him now. God, she could’ve just looked over but _no_ , has to be extra creepy doesn’t she?? Jon battles a natural frown and instead waves at her. She looks back at her laptop.

He’s glad it’s a weekend, standing up from the couch still feeling the aftershocks of waking up into the second half of the day on someone else’s couch in someone else’s clothes – _god, he’s also in Martin’s clothes, he will die, he will die a horrible death._

Jon washes his face with cold, cold water in the bathroom and ties his hair away from his face, moving back into the kitchen where Annabelle has already poured him a mug of coffee and sat back down like she hasn’t moved at all. Jon realizes her video is now paused and he’s simply looking at her screen with the earbuds in for show. He has hands-down _no_ clue what to think about it and contemplates the probability that’s he’d waken up in an alternate, worse, dimension.

He tentatively sits down at the table too, pulling the mug towards himself and taking a sip. She flicks her eyes up and Jon doesn’t know if he should be thankful she doesn’t snap her laptop closed to completely erase that barrier between them.

“Jonathan Sims, I would like an elaboration about your criminal record.” The way she says ‘ _like’_ leaves no room to interpret it as anything other than an inescapable demand.

Jon groans, “Why do you know my full name?” But he’s been regrettably asked this question at two of his other job interviews beforehand – until the library accepted him with barely any interview at all. “I was the major suspect for the murder of a man because it happened in the proximity of my apartment and everyone there hated me. The man who’s done it has been since put away.”

Annabelle nods and seems to latch onto the least important part of the sentence, “Why did everyone hate you?”

Jon blanks a bit, “I’m not sure.”

This is, somehow, funny to her. “Aw, I was hoping for some more dirt-throwing stories.”

“I did not. Have a toxic balcony. At my last place.”

Annabelle doesn’t answer and seems to wait.

Jon wracks his brain for the bigger reasons why he wasn’t…. too liked and relents. “Fine, I was a bit too nosy about what my landlord – and subsequently, the man responsible for the crime, was doing. Not entirely legally. So he spread rumors that I was the reason for the security system everyone had chipped in for getting stolen.”

_“Did_ you steal it?”

Jon is about to get really offended when he sees Annabelle smiling. It’s not entirely pleasant.

“…No. I’m fairly certain that was the landlord too.”

She nods. Jon somehow feels like he’s passed a test.

“So you really didn’t know that Martin was famous?”

Jon can feel himself blush and ducks his face down to drink, “He’s famous?”

This somehow pulls a sharp chuckle from Annabelle, “Rather. I was wondering if you were biding your time before going fangirly or whatnot, but it seems you had something much more surprising up your sleeve… Assassin allegations…” She raises her eyebrows, “Good going, I suppose.” Yet she seems much more forgiving of – or amused by? – the situation when she’s had sleep.

“I’d be rather grateful if you did not hold that over my head for the rest of forever-” he doesn’t know if this implies he’ll be knowing her for some time to come, and doesn’t know how to go about that “- and yes, I’m not a very big… Youtuber entertainment type of person, I suppose. Ignorant. Or so I’ve been told.”

“Oh, wow, you have other friends?”

“Yes.” Jon frowns. ‘ _Other’_ does this imply she’s… labeling herself his friend? This is neither good nor bad news. Somehow.

“Cool, name them.”

“I do not want you to have access to the people I know, no offense.”

Annabelle laughs at that and goes back to watching her video. Jon is left to stare at his coffee, wondering if he should leave? Martin doesn’t seem to be home- is Annabelle hinting he should leave? No… She’s made him coffee… Or was this meant for herself – some people make themselves two cups in advance, right? – and he’d just stolen it? _Fuck-_

Martin walks through the front door with grocery bags, “Oh, hey Jon!” He raises an arm to wave without letting go of the rather big bag he’s holding and Jon wonders how heavy that is.

“Hello, Martin.”

Annabelle moves her laptop and herself to the couch without looking up, clearing up the table for Martin to set the bags down on. Jon stands up, wondering what the _hell_ situations like this warrant. He is. So. Out of his depth.

So when Martin starts unpacking the bags, Jon cautiously joins. He doesn’t know where anything goes, so he just passes Martin the food, which Martin accepts and sorts into the kitchen. Jon attempts to hold things by their utmost edges to avoid the accidental brush of fingers.

“Oh! Since you’re here in person, I have the privilege of delivering my plant facts directly,” Martin puts the almond milk into his fridge and accepts a bag of grape from Jon, “Do you want general useless information or flower language stuff again?”

Jon digs a box of tea from the grocery bag and passes it over. Thinks about the Clarkia. “Flower language, please.”

“Hmmm,” Martin takes the tea and stashes it away.

Jon watches him effortlessly reach the top cabinet shelf to put away a baking set of bread yeast. To hells with it, he’ll hold the groceries how he likes, who cares if he accidentally bumps hands with Martin?

“You have any flower you want to know about?”

_Clarkias. Tell me about Clarkias. Tell me about why a Clarkia._

“Um, daisy.”

Martin accepts a glass bottle of juice, “Bellis perennis, nice pick. Loyal love, or just loyalty. Also the ability to keep a secret. Purity. Red daisies are neat too, they represent a ‘beauty unknown to its possessor’ which is pretty cool.”

“There’s such a thing as red daisies?”

“Yep! They’re rather striking and don’t really have the same vibe as white ones do, so a lot of people don't recognize them.”

“Do you grow any?” Jon almost jumps when Martin rather sloppily grabs at the carton of eggs he’s handing over and accidentally brushes almost Jon’s entire hand.

“I have before, but not now. I’ve ran out of damned balcony real-estate and Annabelle won’t let me start keeping plants in the guest room.”

“Why?”

Martin looks at him and grins, “She likes making my life difficult. Don’t look so worried, it’s out of great love.” He goes back to close one of the top cupboards. “You hungry for some past-noon breakfast? Once more, though, I need to make sure I’m _not_ guilt-tripping you into food.”

Jon wants to smile and hopes it looks as genuine as he’d like to make it through his inexperience, “I’d like a past-noon breakfast in no relation to anything that has transpired.”

“Any preferences? You just personally met all the groceries so you should have a rather good grasp on what ingredients I have to work with.”

Jon, who hasn’t cooked for the better part of two years more than boiling eggs, is a bit lost. Martin takes it in stride and turns to raise his voice at Annabelle on the couch so she’ll hear past the earbuds, “What food?”

He has a nice voice, Jon realizes, hearing it outside of his usual gentle fretting.

Annabelle looks up without moving, “Sunnyside up and sosig.”

Martin wrinkles his nose, “Wanna try again?”

Annabelle sits up, making head-on eye contact with Martin. “Soseeje.”

“You’re horrible, just say sausage.” Martin turns back to the fridge to retrieve the eggs he’d put away and a few sausages.

Annabelle sinks back into the couch, shouting, "Sorry, lesbian code says I can't," far too loud to compensate to whatever she's listening to. Jon is still attempting to process the exchange when Martin beckons him and hands him a chopping board and three tomatoes.

Jon doubts he has ever felt so self-conscious about simple chopping in his whole life. The pieces will have to be perfect and if they are not and if Martin even says a _thing_ about them, Jon is not sure he will deal well. But Martin asks him about Jon’s useless infodump of the day and Jon loses himself a bit in explaining that time when War of the Worlds was read over the radio in 1938, but was framed as a real-time unfolding alien invasion and freaked out a questionable amount of uninformed and gullible listeners.

Martin snickers and it’s rather melodious with the sizzling of eggs and the fast yet quiet clacking of Annabelle’s keyboard somewhere behind them. Jon’s rolled his sleeves up – not really his, Martin’s, this is Martin’s sweater.

They eat at the couch’s coffee table, all three sitting on the floor and Jon is so hyper-conscious of where his knee is touching Martin’s. Annabelle mansplains about the Stanford Prison experiment of all things, even though Martin whines that she’s explained it to him four times already. She then tricks Jon into arguing with her over ‘the cause justifies the means’ and its applicability in psychological testing. The food is hot and it tastes like heaven once Jon stops burning his mouth on it.

Annabelle mocks him for shoveling the too-hot egg whites and fried tomatoes into his mouth and Martin points his fork at her, “That’s very rich coming from someone who routinely steals uncooked batter and dough from me and then complains about being sick. You’ve never been ethical in your approach to food.”

“Fuck you, Martin.”

But Annabelle smiles and Jon smiles kind of too and allows some of his more prickly walls down, maybe for a little.

She shrugs and speaks up again, “At least me getting sick doesn’t inhibit my talents, unlike Jon, who can scar the inside of his mouth and then lose income.”

Martin turns to him, “Oh, don’t you do voice-acting?”

Jon squints at Annabelle, “What kind of background check did you run on me?”

“Only the best. I need to know who Martin invites into his life.”

Martin tsks and goes back to eating, ducking his head. Annabelle keeps staring at Jon with expectancy, so he sighs and elaborates.

“But yes, I do voice-overs and whatnot on Fiverr and VoiceBunny, plus some stuff for Melanie sometimes. My um, kind of friend. My friend.” He reaches over for his glass of juice to cool his mouth and maybe his face as he’s unused to… being in _any_ spotlight.

Martin sits up, “Wait, GhostHunt UK Melanie?”

Jon nods, raising his eyebrows in question as Annabelle begins to laugh quietly.

“Oh I _knew_ I recognized your voice from somewhere!” Martin exclaims, straightening up where he’s sitting even more, “Oh my god, I’m friends with objectively one of the best voice-over actors on GhostHunt! Annabelle, and you said I’d never achieve anything in my life!” There’s, somehow, not an ounce of sarcasm there. Damn.

Jon is becoming increasingly convinced he must be running a fever. Or maybe an allergic reaction to something growing on the balcony. His face must be rather… obviously flushed- oh it absolutely is, with the way Annabelle smirks at him. She flicks her eyes back to Martin, “Yes, yes, this is an apartment full of celebrities, including, of course, myself.” She breaks out in self-indulgent laughter and kicks Jon under the table, the intentionality of which Jon _cannot_ gauge.

He helps wash dishes, and then it’s… Yeah it’s time to go. Jon collects his old clothes and promises, very sincerely, to return the sweater. Annabelle’s vanished into the guest room and Martin stands with Jon at the door.

“Thank you for a rather interesting Friday,” and once more Martin says it without irony or anything that could damn the earnestness that Jon is desperate to meet there.

“Thank you for um… Everything.” Jon stares at his shoes. “Once more, I don’t know why I freaked out so much yesterday, I’d like to bring my apologies.” He looks up to gauge any reaction and all Martin’s doing is smiling openly, for a moment looking like he’s trying to fight it down. Jon only recognizes because he too is doing his best to push down the grin that’s threatening to compromise his face.

“Hey, it’s fine. I’m really glad you’re alright. Take care of yourself, Jon, kay?”

Martin’s eyes crinkle behind his glasses and he is so beautiful. Jon shoots up onto his tiptoes and kisses Martin, utterly terrified from the moment the impulse crosses his mind. Martin’s mouth is soft and warm and it’s exhilaratingly uncertain, the consequences of such saturated feeling. That’s the extent of Jon’s resolve, it seems, because coming down from the tip-toes as Martin seems to lean down, Jon’s legs tell him to – and he does exactly as so – run the _fuck_ back to his flat that instant.

He slams the door to his apartment, claps his hands over his mouth, slides down with his back against the door, and stares at nothing, mind rushing a mile a minute and thinking: _what the fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're getting there~  
> once more thank you all wonderful people for commenting, it means the world and I'm happy to write for such an amazing audience, i love each of you little bastards


	5. suffering side effects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They finally get their act together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not beta'd i die like Man   
> sorry updates have gotten slow but I'm being nerfed with the lack of schoolwork accountability like a dumbass, yet i do promise and guarantee that this tale will not be abandoned and will be finished in a relatively timely manner (aka not 5 years later)  
> thanks for sticking with me though! (and with the fact I'm extending it by YET ANOTHER chapter) sorry i cant stop writing more than i plan, boo boo the gay yearning dumbass

Jon almost kind of regrets recharging his phone.

It’s gotten dark and he’s still sitting on the floor after having crawled over to the cord, picking through the missed messages. It’s always easiest to start with Georgie. Easiest to read her texts and not think about Martin downstairs and oh god oh fuck he’s so _good_ and pretty oh shit shit shit-

_gm_

_k im back how r u?_

_i think i might know someone in the area who can pick u up-ish? ? can u call martin and sort this out before i try to tho_

_jon?_

_tbh id joke ‘oh no he dead’ but im lowkey scared you are._

_ill give u um… 30 min to radio silence and then ill umm idk uh .. probably_

_uh_

_well i wouldn’t. go as far as.. police?? shit or should i._

_jon?_

Jon finally feels immense guilt overshadow the crippling elation of Martin’s existence. He keeps scrolling.

_OK UR ASS BETTER KNOW ITS LUCKY CAUSE I WAS ABOUT TO CALL THE POLICE ABOUT YOU WHEN MELANIE SHOWED UP_

_she… uh drove over to my flat so we could laugh at u together_

_oh my god_

_were watching martins videos rn.._

_im sending you some memes i cant believe this_

_im friends with a twitter sensation_

Jon opens the following images with mixed amounts of self-conscious cringe and deep, deep regret.

_damn so we both have a crush on a utuber, a modern tragedy huh_

_if i wasnt going thru a gay crisis rn i'd be dying laughing at whatever the fuck led to this_

Jon begins smiling at his phone, reading through Georgie’s subsequent spam a few hours later about kissing Melanie. Jon shoots her a smug ‘congratulations’ and apologizes for vanishing, as his phone had died and he didn’t feel like asking for a charger where he was staying – which was at Martin’s – and well, hm, _I also kissed Martin I’m not sure what to do._

He replies to Basira and Daisy and finally gets up when his joints start complaining. Jon turns the lights on in his apartment, kicks an old pizza box to the door so he’ll remember to throw it out eventually, and resolutely stays in Martin’s sweater. Then Jon boots up his laptop and curls into the seat on his balcony with earbuds and coffee. His YouTube recommends page is documentaries and conspiracy deep-dives, most at the 2 hour runtime mark, and Jon almost regrets what this will do to his recommended videos page, but looks up martn-bee. He watches Martin’s videos, sipping on his drink and convincing himself that he’s here because he _needs_ to verify that this is not a cover story. But knows that he’s stopped believing it hours ago.

A few videos in, he hears a balcony door down below open somewhere and people’s voices spill out, followed by a few test strums of a guitar. Jon leans back and looks out at the street lamps and reddish light pollution and listens to voices he recognizes after a few bouts of laughter as Sasha and Tim, and then hears Martin begin playing and singing. Annabelle sings along, and another voice he doesn’t recognize, and Jon listens, one ear to the video and one ear to the guitar, and it’s a love song.

The next day at work is horrible. Jon buys iced coffee- very iced- because he can’t run from his horribly warm face for long. Martin’d texted him

_okay I don’t know your side of things but I really like you_

_shit_

_Annabelle pressed send on that_

_I mean… good for her, I don’t think I would ever work up the nerves to text you oh my god_

_but um, yeah, I really like you Jon_

Jon has reread the messages a few times and had at first convinced themselves that it was the same kind of ‘like’ that pushed him to kiss Martin – _oh god he kissed Martin –_ but between that and sitting at the barely open library, his brain suddenly caught up and said: but what if it’s the friend kind of ‘like’?

And then Sasha and Tim came into work and Jon had never felt more watched. And he’d worked as a security screen supervisor for almost a year which has left him hyper-aware of all cctv. Sasha had leveled him with daggers and Tim grinned at him, shooting finger guns and Jon is _sure_ Martin has something to do with this.

Jon does his work, wanting to crawl out of his skin and crawl all the way to his phone and text Martin back a whole paragraph about how he wants Martin to hug him again and watch movies with Jon and maybe kiss him. During lunch break, Jon hides into the depths of the library where teenagers have an annoying ability to smooch between study sessions. Jon hovers a bit over the keyboard, torn between what to write and finally begins typing:

_Brain food for the day: in 2001 Jerome Jacobson managed to scam the McDonalds monopoly ongoing contest to win money by replacing stickers with monetary wins with plain non-winning stickers while hiding in airport bathrooms from his supervisor. He’d then send the winning stickers to family who’d cash them and give him part of the win._

_Okay, I have been informed I am horrible with expressing or processing emotion so do accept my apologies for rather …_

_Um_

Jon’s run out of words right about then but out of nowhere, the bubble of Martin typing appears. Adrenaline.

_oh nfkjdngkd don’t worry!! ;u;_

_I like you too._

_FDNGJKFNDJK oh my god okay so no uh regret over a hit-and-run kiss?_

_Maybe regret over the run part but I panicked._

If Georgie can be brave (honestly not difficult to see her being so this may not be too good of a comparison) and ask Melanie on a proper date… Jon types up the message and sends it before his traitorous brain can catch up and backspace, but at the same time another text pops up from Martin:

_Want to have dinner?_

_wanna come for dinner?_

Jon’s hides his face in his elbow to breathe and not make any weird squealing noise. Martin sends him laughing emojis and an ‘oh my god ok’ and asks if Jon has any food preferences or if he’d rather go to a café or something. Jon tells him he’s not picky so Martin can choose. He’s grinning ear to ear and it feels so novel.

Martin says there’s a café in the mall and would Jon like to accompany him to buy groceries _again_ because his house got ransacked by four hungry guests last night. Jon saw Tim and Sasha with leftover-containers today during break and Knew. The thought of doing basic chores like shopping but with _Martin_ is so goddamn alluring it almost takes him out at the knees. Shit he’s got it so fucking bad. Georgie will hear about this.

The rest of the workday cannot pass fucking _slower_ huh? Jon has to switch what he’s working on five different times, going from archiving, to restocking returned books, to double-checking the labeling system Sasha and Tim have been working on, then back to archiving, and so on. The moment the first-night shift employee shows up, some kid with long and mesmerizingly curly blonde hair, Jon is ready to leave. He slaps his purse back together, grabs his coat, and leaves the library as the next shift comes into work. One thing he can respect the sailor-whatever-Patterson or whatever employer for is his adamancy on keeping the library open late into the night. 

Jon walks to the mall with a spring in his step and his fingers sweaty and losing blood circulation around his purse’s strap. It’s an old thing he kind of stole from Georgie and could probably fit three cats into.

Jon is there his obligatory almost twenty minutes early, which is very comfortable for him and horrible for the anticipation he’s practically swimming in.

_Georgie, I don’t know what’s going on, I think I’m going to pass out. I’m meeting Martin at the mall but I’m suffering side effects._

Georgie replies rather quickly with an unflattering selfie of herself lying on the couch with Melanie’s dyed head of hair on her chest, napping. She’s also flipping Jon off but grinning.

_suk on that eboy_

_How rude, what are you even flexing? That your new girlfriend falls asleep while watching Friends?_

_!!! D: < how did u know what we were watching!! fuck you  
i bet YO U havent fallen asleep on martin while watching smth yet ?? heh_

_What is this, queer bingo? What about falling asleep while arguing about Inception?_

_NO u didnt jonathatn simms….  
noooooooooo  
fine i will never measure dicks w u again_

_  
  
That’s disgusting, thank you Georgie._

_keep it cool,, ur fine >;0_

“Jon!”

Jon snaps his head up and smiles against himself as he sees Martin walking towards him. He’ll need to find a way to reel this in.

“Martin,” Jon pockets his phone and they head into the café they’d agreed to meet by. Jon can’t stand first dates- wait is this even a date? Jon stares at Martin’s hand and wonders if he can… take it? Not like he _would_ yknow? But like… could Martin take his hand maybe?

Jon orders an Americano with extra whip cream and Martin gets mango-blended tea and they sit down and Jon feels kind of better about his fidgety hands when he sees Martin’s been kind of red the whole time and won’t meet Jon’s eyes. He presses his ankle against Jon’s under the table and it’s a _very condemning_ move. Jon lays his palms flat on the table.

“Okay, I’m guilty of making casual conversations sound like business meetings sometimes, so call me out if I start doing that.”

Martin huffs out laughter, leaning back, “You’re doing it now,” there’s laughter in his eyes and softness, “But I don’t mind, you rock the business look by the way, when you’re not back from running a mile and sleeping in a McDonalds.”

Jon feels himself burn at the ears, conscious of how this must be the first time Martin sees him with his hair actually more or less brushed and wearing something moderately more presentable.

Martin drinks his tea, trying to suppress his smile so he can sip, “Sorry, continue.”

“Um, well,” Jon steeps his hands, “I think I like you a lot and I want to spend time with you.”

“Mr. Jonathan Sims, do you want to go out with me?”

Jon is hyperaware of everything for a moment and clears his throat, realizing Martin’s assumed a faux-business look, sitting up and folding his hands, picking up an extra straw like a pen and hovering if over the table like he’s about to take invisible notes.

Jon clears his throat and sits up too, schooling his face and adjusting his button-up, “Well, Mr. Martin..”

“Blackwood.”

“Mr. Martin Blackwood,” Jon angles to the side, lifting his hand to gesture at a powerpoint slide that isn’t there, “I think the data from the last month is evidence of an affirmative.”

Martin pretends to write something down, nodding seriously, “I see, I will alert HR.”

They break out into laughter that can’t be appropriate for a café. Jon tangles his legs with Martin’s under the table more and they finally get their breathing in order, and Martin – upon request – tells him about how yes he is _sure_ he isn’t mad at Jon for invading the live stream. He then laughs and clowns Jon for probably just recently learning the word ‘live stream’ which Jon refutes like his life depends on it. When leave and head to the grocery part of the mall, Martin somehow gets a hold of Jon’s hand so smoothly it’s baffling. Jon bumps their shoulders and tries to not worry about sweaty palms.

“Do you need anything?”

Jon remembers his fridge at home and supposes he does, “Probably but I didn’t come here with a list.”

Martin grabs a cart and pulls his phone out – the cover is neko atsume related. He opens the notes app grocery list and they embark, Martin somehow managing to maneuver the cart without letting go of Jon’s hand. He gets Jon to elaborate on the McDonalds monopoly scam and Jon happily rattles off the contents of an article he’d read years ago but retained the majority of due to his affliction to accidentally memorizing mainly useless information.

“And so basically the guy got a bunch of monopoly stickers shipped to himself instead of the company – by accident – and decided to keep them and then use them to replace stickers with wins on them.”

“What a king. You ever scammed anyone, Jon?”

Jon frowns, “What kind of first date question is this? No, I don’t… I don’t think so..?”

“You’re not sure?” Martin looks over at him with a smile, placing a bag of flour into the cart, “Have you _accidentally_ scammed someone?”

“You make it sound so commonplace- and I don’t think I’d _know_ if I did…” Jon raises his eyebrows, now seriously considering if he’d swindled anyone by mistake, “Have you?”

“I scammed my past employer out of money by making him hire someone with no experience or degree, so yes,” He shrugs and smiles but it’s like he’s testing waters.

“Neat, honestly I feel like I’m scamming my current employer too because I don’t even know if he read my resume… Maybe that’s my accidental scam.” Jon bumps their shoulders again, he likes the feeling of Martin next to him.

Martin chuckles, “Peter Lukas, right?”

“ _THAT’S his name-”_ Jon throws his hands up, albeit still holding Martin’s, “God, no one could remember it, I swear.”

“He’d probably be happy about it. The man’s a self-imposed recluse with too much shit to say.”

Martin swearing catches Jon off guard but in a.. nice way. “How do you know him?”

“I met him at Vidcon of all places.” Martin wrinkles his nose about it, meanwhile placing milk into the cart, “I still don’t know what he was doing there and he won’t tell me. Attached himself to me almost at the hip and later realized we were from the same place, so.” Martin shrugs, Jon’s watching him and the way he speaks effortlessly and smoothly when he’s talking about something he knows. “Yeah, anyway he kept talking and then we flew back here on the same plane. I met Tim and Sasha through him cause he’d let me film things at the library if I helped him design a website. Man’s crippled when it comes to understanding technology.”

“Wow.” Jon blinks down at the ground, “I’ve barely talked to him.”

“Probably for the best.”

“Probably. Martin, do you play guitar?” Jon’s not sure where it comes from but overhearing acoustic music last night has been stuck in his head maybe a little.

“Is this related to Peter Lukas?”

Jon sputters, “Wh- no, no, unrelated. He didn’t plant me in your life to somehow coerce you into joining a band.”

Martin laughs merrily and it’s so nice making him laugh.

“Fine, fine. I do, I do, not professionally or anything,” Martin picks out tomatoes from the stand, “I’m usually the designated sober friend and Tim forces me to bring the guitar sometimes when we go camping.” He smiles at Jon, “What are your opinions on camping?”

“I’m not a fan of insects and as it turns out, have interesting allergies, but um- conceptually sounds… Intriguing.”

“Conceptually?”

“Never been.”

“Wow, okay, you’re coming along next time, yeah?” Martin finally has to let go of Jon’s hand to go through the apple pile and find the un-bruised ones. “I’d love to bring you, it’s usually myself, Sasha, Tim and some of Annabelle’s friends.”

“Are Annabelle’s friends like Annabelle?”

“Well, I happen to be Annabelle’s friend so judge from there,” Martin shrugs, “she’s just prickly around new people cause she likes to be mean. Most of her buddies are less feral.”

Jon huffs involuntary laughter at the last bit, the image of Martin playing guitar at a campfire straight from a movie at the forefront of his mind, “I don’t think I’d mind too much..”

Martin passes by him, carrying a bag of apples back to the cart and kisses Jon on the cheek, “Neat!”

Jon takes a few seconds to catch up, face burning, “Neat.”

Martin asks him back about if Jon plays anything and Jon has to admit to being in a college band. This is exceedingly interesting, apparently, and Jon quickly saves the situation by insisting that he has lost all ability to play any instrument he might’ve ever learned, and Martin catches on the fact that Jon can still probably sing. Jon scrunches up his face and says that he’s not sure about that and Martin smiles again and hanging out with him is like a serotonin overdose.

Jon ends up grabbing more grape juice and a whole head of cabbage to try and curve his midnight snacking activities into a healthier course. Martin’s groceries take up two medium bags and Jon’s about to settle for not holding Martin’s hand the way home since he’ll be carrying each bag in each hand- Martin picks up both bags with one and takes Jon’s hand in the other. Okay.

Martin tells him about how he met Annabelle through his last job where she’d somehow figured out his age through a background check she ran for fun, and how she’d blackmailed him into running weird errands for her. And how she gets sad if he has to skip out on game night with her because she’d gotten attached but doesn’t want to admit it. Jon snickers about it, and describes his side of being picked up by Annabelle from the McDonalds which makes Martin laugh guiltily.

They reach their apartment and split on Martin’s landing, Jon shuffling his own two-groceries-in-total grocery bag from hand to hand. Martin smiles, “Okay, that wasn’t the most high-production-value first date but I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with you.”

Jon nods, “And honestly a rather tame one compared to the other circumstances we’d met under… But yes, me too, Martin. Wait.”

“Mm?”

Jon could bore holes into the floor where he’s staring, “Wait are we- sorry, I need to double-check, we’re dating, right? I’m prone to… misreading situations.”

There’s no judgment or, really, surprise in Martin’s reply, more of the usual gentle flustered-ness, “If you’re- well, I’d hope so…? I’d like to be, yes.”

“I’d, um, too, like to. Yes.” Jon rips small holes into the handles of his bag to fidget. “Boyfriends, yes? God, I sound like a highschooler-”

“Yes, yes, boyfriends, that’s rather splendid.” Martin grins now and clears his throat to get Jon’s attention. Jon tilts his head back up to look at Martin. “And this is so you’ll stop worrying now that we’ve established an agreement,” he leans down to kiss Jon and it’s oh so very nice. Martin crowds him a bit, making sure the groceries don’t get in the way, it’s not prolonged but Jon’s kind of worried about what effect this will have on his ability to breathe from here on out.

Martin straightens back up, face tomato-red, “Yeah?”

Jon feels himself burning similarly, and manages to stutter out a ‘yeah’. They part on the landing after Jon bops up to kiss Martin on the cheek once and flees to his own flat, this time, less like running away and more like parting on a very very good note. Jon locks his door carefully, terrified that any sharp move from him can shatter the absolutely unreal _good_ that has seeped into his world.

He toes his shoes off, sets his groceries on the table quietly, sets his bag down, puts his laptop to charge, and picks up the lone throw pillow he has, hides his face in it, and makes some form of noise between a whistling kettle and a cat trying to annoy its owners at 2am by screaming. Jon then calmly sets the pillow back down and plops onto his couch to stare at a wall and process a day full of things that need meticulous processing.

Okay.

Jon exhales the majority of his lungs, inhales the stale air of his living room and goes to open his balcony windows. The mild breeze of evening is welcome and Jon goes about putting his life back together. Replying to emails, standing in front of the mirror with scissors again and then deciding that haircuts can wait, making instant noodles. As he waits for the water to boil, he texts Georgie.

_How are Melanie and The Admiral getting along? I’d venture ‘badly’ but she’s prone to be full of surprises._

He then notices a text from Martin and opens it, beginning to smile vaguely.

_oh, um, I need to fulfill my side of the agreement, what plant would you like to hear about today? i’m an endless pit of flower language trivia  
or just flower trivia tbh_

_Flower language, how about the two wonderful citizens you moved into my balcony?_

_  
  
oh THOSE boys… those are Hydrangeas  
i'm not sure which colors you’ve got since they haven’t bloomed yet, and the meaning is different with each variation…  
in general it can stand for uh heartlessness but jon trust me when i tell you i was more concerned with finding you some space-taking plants that weren’t hard to care for instead of being concerned about the meanings  
but purple Hydrangeas can symbolize the desire to understand somebody.. that’s a bit more applicable u////u_

_How often are you more concerned with meaning than with practicality?_

_i live with the burden of all this knowledge about plant language… have to go through my day aware of what random bushes outside means… but if you’re asking about the Clarkia, yes that was language over practicality._

_How’d you know I was asking about the Clarkia._

_^u^ hehe_

Jon pours water into the ramen and texts back: _Your company delights me too._

Martin sends him an over-photoshopped cat holding a thumbs up with heart emojis. Jon eats with the included plastic spoon, passing the cutlery drawer untouched on his way to the couch. Martin soon departs to film and Jon can feel the drowsiness of an eventful day setting in. He absolutely doesn’t change back into Martin’s stolen jumper and crawl into bed. He falls asleep mid-text to Georgie after looking at pictures of Melanie hanging out with The Admiral. He’ll need to get Martin a bouquet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading so far! i love you guys >;)


	6. things can be good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon is bad at handling his alcohol- almost as bad as he is with processing positive change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tim and sasha have NOT gotten enough screentime in THIS story and I'm about to FIX that  
> I'm just going to make the chapter count hypothetical at this point bcs i really do NO T know how long this will be , but trust me it will be a good ending, that's guaranteed :,)

_Hey fucko does Georgie like flowers?_

Jon rubs at his eyes, regretting clicking into Melanie’s chatbox as he waits in line for his coffee. He’d woken up marginally later than usual and decided to grab a drink on the way to work instead of puttering around at home to slap breakfast together.

He texts back with moderate levels of fear: _If you’re looking for a plant-related gift, go with a succulent or cactus.  
Congratulations on scoring yourself a girlfriend, I thought you’d die alone and surrounded by SD cards full of ‘ghost footage’.  
I hate you by the way <3_

Jon places his orders and anxiously stands at the drink pick-up section, watching minutes pass by and worrying about being late. Technically there’s no feasible way he’d ever actually be late for work, as he leaves his house hours earlier than necessary, but he also doesn’t want that emo kid to have to wait.

Melanie texts back a quick ‘I hate you too’ followed by a middle finger emoji and a heart.

Jon walks to the beautiful old architecture of the library rather fast, streets full of people adamant about not making eye contact with anything but the ground or their own respective coffees. There’s indeed someone waiting by the door, and Jon knows he should’ve asked for a name when the kid had first approached him but it’s too late at this point and so he’s stuck mentally addressing him as ‘the goth student’. The kid raises his hand as Jon approaches, looking as fresh as ever, like he doesn’t feel morning-exhaustion.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Jon digs his keys out and lets them both into the building. The kid waves a hand (which produces a lot of clinking) and says it’s no problem, as he’s already grateful Jon lets him manifest here early at all. It’s funny word choice but oddly fitting and Jon finds himself smiling a bit. He turns the lights on and before the kid can vanish into the maze of shelves, Jon calls over, “Hey, um-” _right, no name_ , “Again, really sorry to have kept you waiting,” Jon produces an extra coffee he’d ordered, “I hope this covers the emotional toll of standing outside for fifteen minutes.”

The kid U-turns back to Jon, his black coat making a whoosh, “Oh..” He looks genuinely surprised, like he’s unused to anything above the norm of positivity being introduced into his life. “Huh, thank you…” Jon doubts he’ll ever have kids and promises to spend all his parenting instincts on this young man.

He accepts the coffee and gives Jon a rare grin before finally departing further into the library. Jon needs to find something to call him before he goes insane and as he watches the head of bad dye job appear and disappear between old tomes, he gets a vague idea. Jon’s gone through his phases and sadly still knows every MCR band member by name, and decides to go with Gerard Way. Unless he ever properly introduces himself, the kid can be called ‘Gerard’ in Jon’s head for the sake of simplicity. He wonders how old 'Gerard' is and what he could be researching nearly every day.

Jon picks a book at random to go through, but soon realizes its poetry and puts it back. Finds an encyclopedia of dentistry instead and sits down to devour it while sipping his coffee. ‘Gerard’ interrupts him once, asking if someone’s borrowed the alphabetized reference book of supernatural phenomena in remote northern Europe and Jon helps him look for it.

An hour later Martin texts him _i’m so sorry but Tim bullied me into talking to him._

Before Jon can ask for context, Tim – speak of the devil – comes out of nowhere and claps Jon on the shoulder. It’s a miracle Jon’s coffee isn’t spilled, but miracles only extend so far and Jon drops his phone as well as almost falls out of the chair. Thank god the floor is carpeted.

“Soooo, boss!” Tim plants himself on Jon’s desk, crossing his legs and leaning on one arm, “We’ve been colleagues for _ages_ now and I still can’t believe we’ve never gone drinking.”

“You’ve been asking me for weeks, but I’ll have to repeat I’m not fond of bars.” Jon says purely out of habit as Tim had indeed assaulted him with invitations nearly from day one. This does not seem to deter the man. Jon sets his coffee down in self preservation.

“Oh more of a sad home alone drinker? I can respect that!”

Jon doesn’t comment on the accuracy of the statement and that there is good reason for it, no matter how rarely he engages in alcohol.

Tim continues, “I just thought you should get to know your assistants a bit more, you know, we could talk and all! Personally, I’d be rather excited to learn more about you!”

“I don’t… see why that’s necessary?”

“Oh, come _on,_ Mr. Sims, who doesn’t love getting plastered on a work night? Anyway, Sasha and I are going to hit Skyfall tomorrow night, and you’re coming along, cool?” Tim leaves.

Jon sits in his chair, feeling like he’d just been swindled out of all his money by an ever-grinning scammer.

As far as he knows Skyfall is one of the more pristine bars, so maybe that’s a saving grace. Silver lining.

He picks his phone up, feeling a bit dazed.

_I’m… Apparently going drinking with him and Sasha tomorrow?_

_i'm so sorry for you_

Martin’s reply doesn’t do much to un-muddle the situation. Jon’s never made a habit of getting close to coworkers, if only to avoid them during hours as much as possible. But he supposes that out of what he could’ve been dealt, Tim and Sasha are not the… worst possible outcomes. Even compared to whatever interesting… lineup of people that the night shift is, they're rather outstanding. Jon’s had to talk to that blonde kid maybe twice – the one with the _truly_ abhorrent shirts and hair all over the place - and honestly, Jon would not trade Tim and Sasha for the night shifter’s level of incoherent enthusiasm.

The day goes well enough, and as Jon finally slaps the archiving system into a semblance of consistently, it’s like a weight off his shoulders. They can begin registering books under it now which will make the check out process _so_ much smoother. Jon leans back from his desktop, grinning, and it makes Sasha almost drop a stack of paperbacks as she walks into a table with her hip, staring at him openly. 

He smooths down his expression and leans back into his desk, staring at a stack of empty sticky notes he never uses.

Jon realizes he’s hungry, having worked through his lunch and skipped breakfast. He wonders how to best invite himself into Martin’s kitchen without being rude.

_Trivia of the day: in movies, when actors need to snort cocaine on camera, a lot of times ground-up vitamin C is used. And when actors are seen chewing, the bite taken is usually not from the food at hand, as to keep the amount of it consistent.  
On the topic of food.  
It feels weird to say ‘how does dinner sound like’ since it’s already implying that you’ll be making it, I’m so sorry._

_oh my god don’t apologize lol :,)_  
hmu before you drop in so i can comb my sad hair   
also ‘how does helping cook dinner’ sound like?

_Sounds wonderful, Martin._

Jon double-checks that his changes to the system have been saved and that the library’s filing system, especially for the newspaper archives, can stop resembling a jenga tower on the edge of oblivion and can actually become functional. It’s safe. He tastes the sweet victory of an accomplishment and decides that maybe waving at Sasha and Tim as he leaves work won’t be _too_ big of a burden. They look back at him like they’re witnessing a ghost, but wave back.

The evenings are pleasant now and Jon bee-lines home after one stop, and thinks about how the word bee-line has some dumb origins relating to people in the 19th century thinking that bees went straight back to their hives after collecting pollen. He wonders where he knows this from and most of all _why_.

Jon changes into black well-worn jeans (which do NOT have rips on the knees because YES Georgie I am NO longer in my emo phase PLEASE stop asking). He spends far too long staring at his closet, which consists of the 20 things his friends have bullied him into owning (“nice” things that make him look “presentable”) and the 3 things he actually wears. This is usually not a problem. Jon changes into and out of a selection of shirts, _okay this one is trying too hard- no, this one has holes in the hem what the hell- this fits me well but it’s also a band shirt and am I going to call myself out like that? Jon, come on._

He settles on something still in alright condition that’s also casual and not an attempt to hide his ironic affinities: a black shirt with the classic illuminati eye symbol plastered dead center with the words _Big Brother May Watch // But It Takes Two To Make Eye Contact_. He shoots Martin a text about timely arrival and spends another good few minutes contemplating the moral obligation of giving Martin his sweater back. It can wait.

Jon turns more attention to the stickers on Martin’s doorframe this time as he waits after knocking, and it’s a smattering of pink and yellow very very cartoonish spiders as well as a few circular stickers of fire that read _hot stuff._

Martin opens, a smile already sliding onto his face and Jon finds himself reciprocating, producing a bouquet from behind his back before Martin can a word out.

“Oh! Wow, oh my, thank you!” Martin covers his mouth with his hand, then accepts the flowers and ushers Jon in, “Aw, Jon, you really didn’t have to but I appreciate it very, wait-” He looks closer at the selection, “I hope you washed your hands after touching these, Lilies of the Valley are toxic.”

Jon flaps his hands a little, “Yes! I mean- I haven’t touched them! The lady at the flower shop warned me.”

“Okay, okay,” Martin chuckles and touches one of the gentle ferns instead, “Hang on a second…” He squints like he’s studying a great scroll. “Lilies and ferns- oh, _Jon.”_ Martin goes red, moving to put the flowers in a readily available vase of water. Jon does _not_ regret googling bouquet language combinations and finding _‘your unconscious sweetness has fascinated me’._ Martin comes back around, holding out an apron for Jon and kissing him on the cheek, “Thank you, dear”.

He directs Jon through cooking rice-stuffed bell peppers and they argue about if peppers are fruit or vegetable: case in point being that they _feel_ like vegetable (Martin) and yet they are, through botanical classification, absolutely fruit (Jon). The kitchen is soon smelling pleasantly of the dish cooking and Martin makes himself tea and coffee for Jon.

“Why do you have a coffee machine? I haven’t seen you drink any.”

Martin digs out a shaker of cinnamon powder out from some compartment and slides it at Jon, “I do, just not at 7p.m. Sometimes, it’s either that or some truly horrid, bitter tea to wake me up. Or Gatorade. But I’ve learned from previous mistakes against that last one.” He winks at Jon and god does Jon want to devour every piece of information about this man, “Annabelle is also very convincing when it comes to remodeling my apartment to her own preference.”

“I may have some experience with that,” Jon accepts the cinnamon, “I’ve had three separate powerhouse friends monitoring my wellbeing for almost a year now.”

Martin laughs and sits across from him at that same, familiar kitchen table, “Who would we be without our caring, threatening bully mom-friends.”

Jon talks about Daisy’s insistence on teaching Jon how to fish, which ended with Jon falling into the water due to both his misjudgment in how much trust one can put in river bank soil and also Daisy’s and his habit of scuffling. Martin tries very hard not to snort into his tea or worse, inhale it, and Jon knows he’s good at telling stories and is ready to abuse his experience to its fullest extent. The oven dings and Martin goes to retrieve the peppers.

It’s a tiny bit over-salted.

“Strange, I didn’t add too much, it’s still good though.” Martin chews between fast inhales as it’s still hot.

“ _Strange_ because I salted it _too._ ” Jon is slightly more patient and stares at the food, remembering clearly adding the needed amount of salt.

They lock eyes.

“So if you salted it, and I salted it,” Martin frowns, “Then who’s driving the car?”

Jon barks out a laugh in surprise. The food is hot and savory and he’s missed cooking, especially with someone more… practiced in the kitchen. They talk about cryptids and who grew up believing in what and Martin complements Jon’s shirt and then they talk about Melanie’s show because while Martin doesn’t know her, he’s been a fan for some time, and Jon has never been a fan – nor even watched the episode he _was in,_ but has a few stories about her versus the big bad hospital lawsuit.

Martin packs the leftovers into a container and very meaningfully sets it on the cabinet by the door, reassuring Jon that yes he really can take everything. He also bans Jon from washing dishes after he mishandles the sink and soaks the majority of his left shoulder. So Jon hangs around underhand as Martin cleans up, listening to Martin’s story about how he spent forty minutes following an obviously injured bird around the block in hopes of helping it until he realized it was an empty plastic trashbag and he needed glasses.

Jon’s tempted to drape himself over Martin but also feels the anxiety of unestablished physical contact outside of casual hugs dragging on him, so he hovers just around Martin’s side, which means Martin unintentionally bumps him with his elbow around five times. On the sixth, when _Jon_ bumps into Martin’s elbow and makes him drop a glass into the sink (luckily unbroken) Martin dries his hands, goes, “I’m putting you in timeout,” and picks Jon up by the armpits, setting him to sit on the counter.

Jon utterly forgets what the fuck he was just talking about.

Martin goes back to drying dishes, realizing the silence about one plate later, he whips around to look at Jon, “Wait, shit, are you okay with that? I forget some people don’t like being, um, moved around, I’m sorry!”

“Uh…” Jon sits there, feeling warm where Martin’d lifted him, “No, I.. I suppose it’s, hm, very okay. You have official government permission to do that as often as you’d like.” Jon can feel his face burning and stubbornly bores holes into the sink tap.

“Huh! Noted, I’ll make sure to update my passport,” Martin audibly smiles and goes back to washing dishes, “You were talking about the emulsifier scandal in Taiwan.”

Jon’s brain immediately kicks over channels to the pages of information he has on the tracking down and retrieval of 25,760 kilograms of contaminated tofu in 2014.

“Right so, for 20 years this contamination of food products by methyl dye goes unnoticed…”

He gets through most of the history surrounding the scandal when Martin’s done and comes over to stand where Jon is still sitting, which happens to naturally be between Jon’s legs. He’s tall enough the counter doesn’t give Jon much leverage and they’re basically eye to eye. It’s very distracting. Martin has pleasant, pretty, and wholly enticing eyes- eyelashes too, Jon marks down. The glasses might be a problem if they kissed though-

“So, uh, yeah, they had to withdraw the, uh, toxin-positive products from… uh. Shelves. Are you seriously going to kiss me over food contamination?”

Martin has the decency to look guilty, “Maybe. You’re very nice to listen to.” He leans in (in! not down! for once!) and Jon revels with getting kissed rather thoroughly after talking his jaw tired about emulsifiers. Martin kisses slow and yet with such undying attention that Jon feels both hugely in the spotlight of affection and yet well sheltered. It’s a much more eloquent way to put what’s _actually_ running through his head, which is barely anything above a _wow wow - ow glasses- wow wow wow._

Someway along the slow undoing of Jonathan Sims’ meticulous conviction that he is self-sufficient and could go the rest of his life without human contact just fine, Martin’s hands have crawled onto his waist and Jon’d be completely okay remaining lost in the sensation but he’s been around long enough that the next part comes habitually. He taps Martin on the shoulder, who pulls away looking distracted and mildly confused.

“You alright?” His eyes are getting lost on Jon’s mouth for a few seconds before finally schooling and coming back up to make eye contact, righting Jon’s glasses and then his own, “Jon?”

“I know this may be a very bad time to interrupt- and trust me I am mourning the loss already-” God here he goes with his fucking powerpoint talk again, he knows this is an issue _and he’ll go into the afterlife with the highest word count of ‘useless words said during lifetime’ than anyone else but like_ \- “However, I think it better early than late than never to, hrm, mention something, I’m asexual.”

Martin blinks a few times, then nods, “Okay, I was kind of worried you’d say ‘straight’ there for a moment, I don’t know why.” He smiles, “Alright, thanks for telling me,” He lifts his hands off Jon’s waist though (a tragedy), “Wait, um, well I don’t want to assume anything from the kissing but where on the spectrum? Y’know, what’s cool and what’s uncool?”

Jon loves him so much it’s going to rot his ribs.

“Kissing is very cool, and kissing _you_ is very much the coolest, thank you.” Jon feels himself blush again because it’s one thing to suck face with someone in the kitchen and it’s another to tell them you like it.

Martin catches him mildly off guard by lifting a hand up for a high-five which Jon returns automatically and then huffs (not! giggles!) along with Martin. It calms his nerves, once more a scientific miracle.

“Sorry, do you want to continue this with a cuppa and at a table or on the couch? I realize this is not the best of positions for a serious conversation.”

“Well, I’m glad we can see eye-to-eye for once, ey?”

“That’s a horrible joke coming from a horribly short gremlin as yourself and I will send you hate-flowers for that only.” Martin frowns but he’s fighting not to smile, “No, seriously, I want you to be comfortable.”

“I’m of average human height, and I suppose the couch is… a good alternative.”

Martin pauses, and there’s a question very mutely communicated to Jon. To which he can do nothing but nod.

Martin picks him up and carries him to the sofa, depositing him carefully and sitting down next to him. Daisy’s carried Jon around before (mostly out of harm’s way or to move his ‘I haven’t slept in 3 days’ knocked out body to a different room) but there’s no urgency or customary Daisian cockiness in Martin’s hold and it’s warming to the bones.

“Okay, diplomatic negotiation time.” Martin smiles, “Go as professional as your heart and librarian-lookin aesthetic desires.”

Ew, he’s got Jon figured out, it’s horrible. Jon folds his hands, facing the taunting affair of verbalizing the fact he may possess emotions or preferences, “As mentioned, I’m very fond of kissing and things like, well, as you may have unfortunately established, I’m comfortable if not encouraging of platonic contact pretty much everywhere.”

Martin leans on the backrest to face him throughout, “So hugging, getting carried around, cuddling, all cool?”

“Yes.” Jon eyes Martin’s vacant lap and wonders when it’d be appropriate to crawl over either to press into his side or just to lie on top of him. “I’ve never had a sex drive or desired intercourse, and while it doesn’t outright disgust me in concept, I’m not too hot about the idea of partaking.”

Martin nods again, “Anything specific you don’t want me doing or areas you don’t like touched?”

“My lap and inner thighs I guess? I’m also ticklish but that’s beyond the point, I’d just like you to know I _will_ drop whatever I’m holding if you decide to jab my ribs- _do not abuse this information._ Ensure the safety of your own dishes.”

Martin chuckles pleasantly, “I’ll remember. Never tell Annabelle though.”

Jon snickers against himself and bumps his knee against Martin, “I’ll alert you if anything else comes up that may make me uncomfortable, but I’d also like you to do the same. Call me out if I do things you don’t like or things that make you uneasy, agreeable?”

The smile on Martin’s face is the sole purpose for the change of seasons as it’s so deeply warming, Jon is sure he’ll never need to wear a coat from now on. “Okay, Jon, it very much is.” He then snaps his arms wide open in a very alluring invitation. Jon would like to say he does not scramble.

Martin fishes the remote out of the couch crease as Jon curls up against his chest, “Do you want to watch something? And if yes, are we looking at movies like Sharknado or like Shawshank Redemption.”

Martin is soft and warm and he wraps his free arm around Jon, and it’s very easy to settle against him, especially when he begins to talk most of his sentences into Jon’s hair.

“Martin, just for the peace of my mind, what is your relationship with horror?”

Jon receives a kiss to the crown of his head, “I’ve seen your bookshelf of Lovecraft tomes when I came over last. I’m guessing you’re the ‘sit home alone and watch Hereditary in the dark’ kind of person?”

“No comment.”

Martin laughs and Jon soaks in the strangeness of the sound with his ear against Martin’s chest, “Okay, I’m not a fan of all horror ever, but as long as it’s something that wouldn’t feasibly or easily happen to my own self in this flat, I'm cool. I watch the occasional horror. Or thriller, what have it.”

“You do not know how relieved I am right now,” Jon wheezes, “I was petrified you’d say you hate horror and then I’d have to move out of the country.”

Martin laughs once more and mumbles a _god forbid_ into Jon’s hair. “I’m up for something well filmed and silly, you?”

“I’ve read good things about The Man from Uncle.”

"Uncle..." Martin minutely disturbs Jon’s position by moving to reach his laptop (Apple, Jon notices with minor discomfort at the clean round interface), “Wait, U.N.C.L.E.?” He brings up Netflix and gets his TV going.

“Yes, uncle, it spells uncle.”

“Sounds dumber though to say the word, I don’t make the rules,” Martin shrugs and Jon feels it in the effortless lift of his shoulders.

“I’ll be sure to alert Warner Bros to change the title.” Jon wiggles back into a comfortable position and Martin sits back and the movie’s rolling. He’s partially worried about falling asleep there but no matter how rarely Jon dabbles in comedy movies, the plot _maybe_ drags him in, and Martin periodically cracks jokes about stellar executive decisions in the film, so his consciousness is safe. Jon joins in on heckling the homoerotic tension any two different opposing spies are _bound_ – almost _cursed –_ to have, whether the director likes it or not, and it’s far less draining socially to lie on Martin’s chest than he might’ve feared. Things can be good.

They part a bit bleary-eyed and rumpled, just an hour away from having dozed off on the couch, Martin shoving Jon the food container and then dragging him into another kiss that Jon wishes was done before the container exchange because now his hands are busy with Lock&Lock instead of Martin’s jumper. This one’s slow and peaceful and feels like a very acceptable ‘goodnight’ in Jon’s personal, unbiased opinion.

He showers briefly, crashes into bed and goes to scroll around his phone for a while, abstaining from r/LetsNotMeet because he knows if he goes on reddit, he’ll get sucked in and he’ll be seeing sunrise before he’ll be seeing sleep. So he texts Georgie, reading through her unfortunate heart-melt at Melanie buying her a cardboard box full of cacti. Jon tells her it’s disgusting and that they’re disgusting and that the only redeemable occupant at Georgie’s place is The Admiral. He follows this up with a brief paragraph about how he’s really thankful she’s put up with his bullshit thus far and falls asleep after she replies _Jon what the fuck prompted that?_

Already a good start: he wakes up on time. Jon would attribute this to how he did not wear the sweater to sleep this night. He will indeed need to return it. At some point. He wonders how likely Martin is to forget he owns it.

Jon complains the Georgie about the forthcoming ‘night out with colleagues’ on his way to work, groggy and dreading social interaction (‘Gerard’ gets a free pass). But he gets there, lets ‘Gerard’ roam into the shelves where he now disappears so naturally as if he belongs there among the books, sits down at his desk with a new book, and pulls out the tupperware of leftovers. Jon reads about the history of puppet making in India and Europe while he eats, careful to keep the book and food at maximum distance from each other.

By the time Tim and Sasha roll into work (Tim: late) Jon’s feeling a bit less picky about socializing, feeling marginally more human. He can sense himself running out of charge for conversation and hopes to make it through tonight before he can vanish off the face of the earth entirely tomorrow evening and sit in his apartment with the blinds drawn as per habit.

With the system out of the way and fixed, Jon goes back to looking through the suggestions box. There’s a few prank slips definitely from Tim, notable _The Librarian needs to stop being a simp for books and should learn to skateboard!_

It’s very obviously Tim’s handwriting and is followed by an illustration of what Jon presumes is himself on a skateboard.

This is followed by _jk jk I know u’ll have to look through all these and I hope u have a chill day!! >:)_

Jon finds himself smiling a little bit because honestly in a weird library with weird architecture, a piece of shit name, a piece of shit archiving system, an unhelpful boss and poor ventilation, Jon has really been dealt a good team.

He immediately smothers the sentiment because he’s gotten very good at being annoyed at them and can’t just stop doing that now, it’d be weird and unprofessional.

And it only gets weirder when Sasha looms into his periphery like a sign of misfortune. Jon keeps working, hoping that whatever it is it’ll resolve itself, suppressing the sense of being watched with ferocity. She finally approaches and pulls out a chair next to him. She is, to put it very concisely: petrifying.

Jon ventures, feeling scrutinized beyond belief, “May I help you?”

She looks heavily stern, even if it sits naturally on her features, “You’re dating Martin, right?”

He can feel himself beginning to burn but attempts to stomp it down, instead bristling, “I don’t see how my personal life is relevant to workplace interaction.”

“Why?”

“Well, this is a professional environment and workers are under no obligation to share personal details-”

“No you dingus, why are you dating him?”

She’s still got the same machine gun intensity to her and Jon’s inherit caginess in the situation immediately skips gears to a searing kind of defensiveness on Marin’s behalf.

“What do you mean _why?_ He’s a perfectly acceptable boyfriend, I don’t see how this is of any relevance to you!” Jon finishes the second half of his sentence already out of his seat and flees the room very very quickly.

Sasha scares him much like the woman at his old surveillance job had, emitting the vibe of kickass even with her age and cane.

Jon texts Martin about how, if looked at at its simplest, Rasputin came to the royal family from Siberia in order to cure the son’s hemophilia and only later got tangled in the web of political affairs. Hence, if there was no hemophilia, there would be no excuse or reason for him to partake in the royal family’s drama the way he had.

Martin doesn’t reply and Jon wonders if he’s sleeping again, or filming? The workday meanwhile draws to a rather daunting end and Jon contemplates just going home and then pretending he died but some things need to be faced head-on. He waits for Sasha and Tim at the doors and tries to avoid eye contact with the former in residual discomfort.

As they walk to Skyfall he makes sure Tim is in the middle, a fact Tim doesn’t seem to mind as he talks about the article on a money-laundering business getting busted he found today from 1917 while fixing the old newspaper storage.

It’s off to… _a_ start.

Skyfall is clearly meant for people who prefer the vast expanse of dancefloor instead of sticking to the walls or sitting in booths, but luckily Tim promises Jon to not subject him to the former.

“Only cool coworker drinks and talking about _all_ the recent gossip, no grinding, twerking, or otherwise fun activities will be involved, I swear on my tattoo.” Tim waves his hand slowly and leads them to a booth, him and Sasha familiar with the place.

Jon realizes he doesn’t _know_ whether Tim even has a tattoo (wouldn’t be too surprising) and hopes that he does, giving the promise credibility.

They order drinks, the waiter a bit rude in a flirty way, adorning a sprawl of winding scars and Tim leans over to whisper at Jon: “He’s cocky cause he knows he can’t be fired. Owner’s cousin or something.”

Sasha leans back, grinning, “Sure, Tim, ‘or something’, like you don’t know everything about him.”

“I’m telling you, we have not dated nor have we slept together, I don’t even know his name.” Tim points an accusing finger at Sasha.

“Mike Crew. Even I know.” Sasha shrugs. Tim gasps immediately and Jon is starting to catch onto how much more joking this is than sincere.

“Oh so _you_ know? And you accuse _me_ of not knowing? Sasha…. How horribly impolite of you, disrespecting a fellow coworker and a stellar boyfriend if I do say so myself…”

“I love you so it gives me rights to bully you.” She smiles and Tim blows her a raspberry and Jon feels like he’s babysitting very endearing adults. Though the moment a morsel of fondness crosses his mind Tim immediately snaps his attention over to Jon and proceeds to grill him about seemingly inconsequential details in order to get to know him.

“So you’ve never worn drag?”

“I- no I have not, what prompted this?” Jon stutters into his glass and immediately mentally fact checks that he indeed has not. As far as he knows. “And why am I getting all the questions? Look, if you two are undercover cops and this is all an elaborate set up t-”

Sasha lifts her palms up, still eyeing Jon like she’s trying to read a sign from really far away, “Woah, calm down, I don’t think any police money would ever make me _pretend_ to work a whole other job. Plus Tim has a criminal record.”

Tim slaps his hand on the table, “Sasha!” he turns to Jon, “It was breaking and entering and it was to get my brother out of some bullshit. I have not killed.”

“I literally was not going to even guess you committed murder but now I’m double suspicious.” Jon stares at him, then turning to down the rest of his drink when he sees Sasha hailing Crew for another round. “I’m rather against such pointed targeting of myself, and propose a game of never have I ever.”

They both stare at him like he’s just grown a second head.

Jon frowns, sinking into his seat, “What? I had a college life. Get off my ass.” _God, it’s hitting huh._

People start filtering in as the sunlight disappears and Jon remembers to be polite, not check his phone too much, drink slowly and not over-order.

By the time the bar is full, Tim and himself have lost their ties, Sasha has produced lipstick from her bag and given Tim a surprisingly steady bright red lips, and they’re all holding hands up in the air with various levels of lowered fingers.

Tim’s mad at Sasha as she’s been pointedly targeting him the last few rounds with her endless supply of Timothy Stoker trivia. Jon can see in his smirk that he’s about to get back at her, “Never have I ever worn heels.”

“Aw, now that’s not even _creative._ ” Sasha lowers a finger and takes a drink- nearly swallowing it wrong when Jon too sips. “Wow, what heels are we talking?”

Jon squints, “I like to feel tall. Never have I ever gotten unprofessional piercings.”

“Now this is just bullying,” Tim with his earful of jewelry groans.

Sasha sways her glass, “Never have _I_ ever crashed a theater production.”

Tim drinks and Sasha snorts, “ _Wait,_ I was targeting _Jon,_ what have _you_ done?”

Jon immediately exclaims, _why would you pin me for someone to crash theater productions,_ but Tim’s exclamation is louder, “ _Sasha,_ I am a _deep_ and complex individual with a lot of beef with the fucken circus.”

He begins the retelling of said story which is funny, and Jon doesn’t know if he’s to pin the majority of that on alcohol or Tim himself. The place is getting crowded and loud and there’s people dancing and by the time Tim’s done, spreading his hands wide and almost slapping both Sasha and Jon, saying _so FUCK Due-soe-lay whatever it means._

Jon’s tempted to correct him on the pronunciation but also can’t remember the word Tim’s looking for or how to say it and then somehow they’re on the dance floor and it gets _real_ spotty from here.

It comes back to him nonchronologically later, so he remembers being hoisted up onto Tim’s shoulders and carried around above the crowd only three days after the event. He doesn’t know the music but he knows the feeling of not giving a fuck and it’s like there’s eyeliner on his face again and a leather jacket with spikes on his shoulders and he’s screaming along to a band with his course mates. 

They pile out and it’s dark and Jon and Sasha have their arms around each other because Tim is too tall for the both of them to rely on without shoulder death. Tim starts trying to locate a cab and Jon vaguely understands that he’s now sitting instead of standing and that Sasha’s sitting instead of standing too and he’s really really sweaty.

It takes Jon a few days to retrieve full recollection of this moment and it goes something along the lines of ‘what Jon least expected’.

“Jon-” Sasha whines, “Jon, honey, I’m so sorry,” she’s flapping her hand like she’s fanning herself and Jon is so _worried_ about her what if she’s _sad._

“Sasha, Sasha, what? No, it’s okay, it’s okay. What are we talking about?”

“You’re just so _stupid,_ I’m so sorry, I’ve seen you photocopy blank sheets of paper on a- on a caffeine crash,” she grips his shoulder and looks into his eyes so severely Jon wants to make sure she never cries ever. “And I just _know_ your dumb ass can hurt Martin by accident and I gotta make _sure,_ like _sure_ this isn’t something you’re doing cause you’re so fucking _stupid.”_

Jon loves her so much he’s missed half what’s being said, he needs to make her _get_ that he _got it_ though, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

“And it’s just so _fun,”_ she brushes her hair away that’s come undone throughout the night, “To _bully_ you? I’m so sorry? Honey, shit, I ‘m so sorry, it’s like kicking a puppy, god you’re so _good.”_

“Sasha, please don’t cry,” Jon hugs her as they sit on the curbs, “Why are you crying I don’t get it, you’re very good at bullying why are you upset?”

“I wanted to ask you _why_ you like Martin cause I needed to _investigate_ if it was good and proper,” she digs her phone out, checks the time without really retaining information, and puts it back in her purse, “And I just accidentally said it in my bully-Jon voice and I couldn’t _back out_ you know?”

Jon nods, even though he doesn’t _really_ but that’s okay, “Yeah, Sasha, you’re very cool, thank you.” He feels like he wants to cry and get a hug from her forever. “I really do like Martin,” Jon returns a similar hold but now his hand on her shoulder, and they’re sitting facing each other holding the shoulders opposite, “Wow, I really do, oh no what will I _do_ now?”

Tim comes around to pick them up and start steering everyone to a car, “What’s the hot topic now?”

Sasha clings onto Tim’s middle, “Jon likes Martin.”

“Oh my god, Jon likes Martin,” Tim echoes sincerely as they all for some reason pile into the backseat, Jon getting the middle. He’s squished by Tim and Sasha as he starts hyperventilating because oh my _god_ he does like Martin but they’ve barely even gone out right? Like, what if Martin’s just a _friend_ you know?

He’s been talking out loud apparently because Sasha begins reassuring him that _no_ Martin’s also very Gay for Jon, at which Tim tunes back in and very accusingly tells Sasha to stop using homophobic language.

“Yeah but what if he’s-” the car hits a bump and they all groan, “Like, not _real?_ I like him so much he’s so _good_ it’s horrible, there must be something wrong! What if he doesn’t _like_ me, Sasha?”

“We need to find out.” Sasha nods and they both proceed to call Martin at the same time, but Jon takes longer to dig his phone out where he’s sardined in and so Sasha’s call comes through.

“Hello?”

Now all three people in the backseat start talking at the phone, which is _not_ on speaker, and Martin’s _oh so I see the night is going well, what’s the matter guys?_ Is almost lost.

Through an onslaught of Jon’s now blabbering about how Martin’s eyes are pretty and Martin’s jokes are funny and Martin’s food is very good and will Martin please not kick him out, and then Sasha’s inquiring about… well… nothing? She’s definitely asking questions with a very serious tone but none lead anywhere, and then Tim occasionally tosses his opinion on how cute they are in. And through all this Martin manages to somehow piece _something_ together.

“Oh my, okay, okay, let’s all calm down everyone, can whoever’s got the phone give it to Jon?”

The three hands that have been previously holding it in unison break away so now only Jon has it, pressing it far too hard against his ear, “Martin? Martin?”

“Yes, I’m here, uh, well I can’t be sure what specifically you’re worried about but I really do like you and you’re lovely to have around, and yes we are dating, in case you’re still somehow suspicious about that. I, Martin Blackwood, like you, and would also like you to get home safe. You also have pretty eyes.”

Jon spends the cab ride home crying into first Tim’s shoulder and then Sasha’s, and then apologizing to both as he’s finally dropped off at his apartment where Martin had volunteered to pick him up and ensure his safety getting back to his doorstep. Tim and Sasha wave an _inappropriately_ loud goodbye, then closing the door and heading to their own place, and Jon hangs himself off Martin, at this point having forgotten what he’d been crying about but having all the same retained an undying affection for Martin At The Very Moment Right Now Right This Second.

“Alright, let’s get you home and ensure you don’t die tomorrow morning, how early do you wake up?”

Jon squints at the carpet pattern as Martin walks him down the hall to the stairs, where he picks Jon up with little pause. Jon sighs, "Very."

Martin starts taking them up the stairs and Jon suddenly _Realizes_ a Horrible Truth, “Oh my god, Martin, Martin, Martin, I need to let poor Gerard, Gerry, I need to let him in in the morning.”

“Is that a cat?”

“No!!!” Jon swings his legs a bit, “The kid, the kid, he comes over in the mornings- college student, why do I call him the kid when he’s not too far from my age…I’m so old.”

“Okay, let’s focus, what about Gerry?”

“I need to let him into the library…. But I can’t text him, I don’t have his numbers, I can’t tell him I’ll be late.”

Jon’s going through a parental crisis when Martin gets to Jon’s flat, setting Jon down and asking for a key that takes too long to locate.

“Could you email the night-shift?”

Jon crashes into his apartment, kicking his shoes off badly, “Oh! Smart Martin, Martin,” He goes back to clinging on Martin’s neck, “Where are my kisses from Martin? My hugs and cuddles from Martin?”

Martin sighs with fondness and moves Jon further into his apartment, depositing him on the bed, “You need to go to sleep.”

Jon slumps down, lazily unworking the buttons of his shirt, “Martin is a mean and cruel boyfriend, I am packing my books and running to Finland.”

“Sure you can, in the morning though, yes?” Martin leans down to kiss his forehead and stands up to leave the room. Jon retrieves his phone and sends out a coherent, professional email to the night staff. He passes out soon after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jon is a lightweight and also a sappy drunk sorry i don't take criticism 
> 
> thanks for reading~ i love you all and thx for sticking w this lmaao


	7. carton of juice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The email has an effect on the lives of more people than Jon could've imagined (he'd hoped it'd be a solid 0).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok ill stop trying to bring it to an end (and failing to do so), hence i am adding a new arc, fuck everything lets just VIBE,
> 
> huge shoutout to all the absolute goldmedalists who have been leaving comments, i read them all, i love you all, and i would like to in turn thank you for that
> 
> now back to the allotted bullshit:

**From** : [jonathan.sims@library.co.uk](mailto:jonathan.sims@library.co.uk)

**To** : [michael@library.co.uk](mailto:michael@library.co.uk) , [jared.hopworth@library.co.uk](mailto:jared.hopworth@library.co.uk) , jude.b , ju , jude.per, rry , j

**Subject** : let my boy in

henlo

my poor biy xannot get into the library in thr morning because i cannot unlock it foc him tomorpw. he is GERARD but not really its ok, u will recognize. pls open librbray for him((((( i willcry and i cannot bare the qonsequences pls someone upp n the lobrary for him tme esely i eill buy uyo coffee :)))))) i love ou guys you are tue benst team even

jonathan sims :)))))

_Jonathan Sims  
Head Library Manager  
Library, UK_

It is simply _impossible_ for Jon to have a good morning.

First, it’s the headache and a taste in his mouth like he’d indulged in eating roadkill. Then it’s looking at the time in horror and realizing he’s left Gerard waiting outside for about two hours- this also means Jon is TOEING the line of being late himself. Then, it’s the second wave of nausea and the mild relief of finding painkillers and water on his bedside table.

Jon dresses hastily, contemplating calling in sick but aware that his _only_ coworkers are in the exact same situation. He grabs a bottle of water and coffee from a kiosk on his miserable way to the institute, getting assaulted by memories of last night like a train whipping past him, awfully loud and full of flashing images. He remembers crying with Sasha (and that’s why he doesn’t fucking drink in public what the fuck Jon) then crying with Tim then calling Martin. It’s horrible and he’s _sure_ he’s missing pieces, and then Jon _still_ somehow gets to the library early.

He’s dreading finding Gerard at the entrance, sad, or worse, gone and disappointed, but the library’s lights are… on. Jon checks his phone and no it’s still before the official open-hours. _A break in-_

Jon enters the room with its tall ceilings and rows of knowledge and he sees Gerard and that blonde kid from night shift sitting at a table with shot glasses and a carton of pineapple juice. They’re talking, Gerard quietly and the other much louder, even though the volume doesn’t aid Jon in understanding what the hell he’s saying.

Jon clears his throat to not spook the two.

They get spooked.

Both jump a bit, the night-shift kid more so, but quickly relax again, looking at Jon and waving. Jon raises a hand back, face and mind blank blank blank, and Gerard actually smiles at him a little while the night-shift kid grins a horrible horrible thing.

“Um, I see you got let in?” Jon is reeling, it’s not like Sasha or Tim are too privy to his habit of letting Gerard hang around, so he doubts they’d have called in someone to open the library-

“Yeah, Mr. Sims, you sent an email,” the night-shift kid grins harder, and the way his face moves suddenly has Jon doubting his age all over again and wanting to pin him as older than the original ‘summer job’ Jon thought this was for a teen.

“What… email?” Jon barely says before he gets the vaguest, most subtle of recollections, of late-night typing he’d hoped was an insane text to Georgie or even Daisy. “Um, well I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.” He eyes the carton of juice again and departs into the staff room.

His phone shows what he so dreads to see: an email sent last night at 11:58 pm. Not that late, he reasons, not that late. He opens it and feels blood drain from his face and probably get absorbed by the You Fucked Up area of his brain. He reads the barely legible text, each word worse than the other, glances up to who he’d sent it to, and once more laments the fact that the establishment he works at is rather descriptively called Library or The Library and literally nothing more. Officially. He works at The Library.

**To** : [michael@library.co.uk](mailto:michael@library.co.uk) , [jared.hopworth@library.co.uk](mailto:jared.hopworth@library.co.uk) , jude.pe , ju , jude.per , j

Jon has a hodgepodge recollection of Jared being an intimidating guard for the night shift, so that can’t be whoever’s sitting with Gerard. Jude is short, he remembers, and hence it leaves Michael, apparently someone the _very_ bad corporate email system did not grant with a last name.

Okay so someone from the night shift let Gerard in. Which sucks because the night shift doesn’t stay overnight… Fuck he’ll need to pay the kid- adult?- college student??- _Michael_ extra. Buy him coffee too. Jon knows he can’t keep paying his way out of every social mishap with coffee but… _so_ far it’s worked just fine.

He hopes he’ll never have to see Michael ever again extensively after this to best escape confrontation and reminders of The Email. He goes back out to the main area and the two are still chatting away over something Jon (not snooping!) recognizes as a MadLibs booklet.

He starts opening the library up like he would any other day, having arrived far closer to ‘on time’ than he’d ever like to from now on. Blinds pulled up, returned-books box emptied so Tim can begin restocking the bookshelves, chairs pushed in. Sasha is _on_ time. Looking frazzled like she’d invented teleportation through sheer force of will because she couldn’t stand the concept of being late.

Gerard and Michael have vanished by then and Jon eyes the empty carton of juice in the trashcan, never before more desperate for intel.

Sasha sits down in the staff room and Jon brings her a glass of water she might’ve regarded like poison a week ago.

“Thank you.” She says it the way people who don’t want to hear any sounds talk.

Jon nods and goes back to shuffling around at half-speed and rearranging stationary on his desk and books.

Tim shows up twenty minutes late, looking fresh and utterly the most human of them all. He tries to say about one thing and by the looks that Jon and Sasha throw him about his elected volume he figures that maybe he can wait.

Jon texts Martin after looking through the 3a.m. memes he’d been sent. _Okay, whatever I said last night while piss-drunk, I’m sorry. I hope this experience will forever discourage you from drinking with me for I do not look forward to near-blacking out around people anymore.  
And thank you for the painkillers you are a very good human being whom I adore dearly. _

Jon then sits at his desk and thinks about Martin a lot.

It’s a quieter day and god bless for that, and Jon has time to spare on thinking – or rather to stop running from thinking by doing unnecessary hand-busy tasks. He twirls an unfolded paperclip on his desk, eyes watching the slow turn of a book’s pages on one of the tables but not necessarily looking.

He’d so primarily distrusted Martin for his politeness and niceties and just for being a pleasant person altogether, and then he’d found an outlet for it in blaming him of – oh god, Jon suppresses a physical wince – contract manslaughter. And then Martin hugged him and didn’t shoot Jon for kissing him. He’s got soft, warm hands that Jon wants to hold and be held by, and he’s fucking _strong_ and Jon wonders if he has a type because Georgie could pick him up too – and did so excessively even without the height difference. He wonders how much of that Melanie will have to deal with and can somehow tell she’ll probably pretend to hate it or something. For image’s sake…. Stubborn.

God, they’re similar.

_Georgie_ has a type huh? He’ll clown her for that later. Dating hell-bent people who chase phantoms into restricted areas, huh. Melanie for a job and Jon as a college hobby. He then thinks about Martin playing guitar and Martin cooking and Martin in general. Tim goes out at lunch and comes back with McDonalds which none of them are too excited about actually consuming on an objective basis but the concept of simple, greasy things is unendingly appealing now. They all sit at Jon’s desk so the library isn’t unattended but also because now… Jon guesses he’s part of the ‘the team’ or something… Sasha feeds Tim french-fries and then gags when Jon dips his into the McFlurry instead of ketchup.

“What?” Jon hisses, “It tastes good and you should try.”

Sasha waves her hand quickly, “No and no no no. Never. I really do not like you.”

She turns to Tim for support who leans over to Jon and dips a french-fry into the McFlurry too.

It’s difficult having friends in a place that’s notorious for ‘ _sssshhh indoor voice!’_

After lunch Jon sees Martin’s texted back cats holding hearts and

_don't worry the only thing you told me was about how you were a fraud painter on the run after your faux-Mona Lisa sold for seven thousand euros but the buyer found out it was fake and you had to steal the collector’s Tesla to run from Finland (where this was all taking place) but you hit the Mayor’s sun on the way, so then you had to bring him along as hostage, but he didn’t like his father and now he’s got a scholarship for an art school because he learned from you._

_Really??? God_

_lmao no  
it’d be hilarious if i got it spot on tho huh?  
no you just worried about me being a ghost/not real  
which i will reiterate, i am a Real Boy  
who likes you, and i'll repeat it as many times as it takes for you to stop worrying about it tbh_

_Don’t say these things, Tim will pick me apart for gossip if he sees me smiling at my phone.  
This is a threat._

_aw what will you do <3  
cry me a river? horrible to be you huh…  
short plant fact for today: flower language originated in Ottoman Turkey, do with that as you wish~_

_I suppose I will, thank you._

Jon spends the next hour of mindless library watching-over reading about the origins of flower language and Turkey’s history. Tim and Sasha mention coffee after work but he turns them down in favor of sleep, albeit this time almost regrettably. Sasha nods approvingly and turns to Tim telling him she’d honestly also prefer sleep as not _everyone_ can come in looking sober and unbothered in the morning. Tim snickers and says they can go home without sitting at a café as long as he can pick the air conditioner temperature when they get there. They leave and Jon’s packing his bag waiting for the night shift to start appearing when Michael rolls in from the opposite direction – from one of those unexplored doors Jon knows probably has switches and wires behind it or a stepladder or _something_ dusty.

He stretches and flips his hair onto the other side, obviously having been _napping._ He’s very tall and Jon laments the joint soreness the guy must have been subjected to. He goes to methodically crack an impressive and frankly disturbing amount of joints one by one, including his jaw and somehow elbows, and finally ends up around Jon’s desk.

“Hey, I’d like to apologize for making you work overtime and also apparently sleep here, I wasn’t in the right mind when I sent the email.” Jon ventures.

Michael, immediately very awake, smiles again and Jon guiltily wishes he didn’t do it so widely, “Oh? Hadn’t noticed, seemed rather concise.”

Jon realizes he can’t tell if it’s sarcasm or not. He nods nonetheless, immensely glad that even if this is a jab he’s misinterpreting, Michael isn’t necessarily haunting him about the embarrassment of an email. “Well, still. I’ll see about your paycheck and if you’d like coffee or something, I’ll buy you-”

“You’re funny, Librarian.” Michael shrugs his bony shoulders, “But not my type.”

“Wh-” Jon sputters, “No, I’m saying as repayment for the um- for letting G- um, the, _him_ in. I’m not asking you out, oh god. Sorry for the confusion.” Jon’s mind helpfully supplies _say you’re ‘taken’, isn’t that cool that you can say it?_

Michael regards him with unchanging humor in his confusing eyes, “You could get me a slushie. If you know what that is.”

Jon’s not the best with strangers- hell he’s not that good with _people he’s known for a while –_ and Michael is a social sensory nightmare. “I… Yes I know what a slushie is.”

Michael laughs, setting his hands on the desk and leaning on his arms, his laugh is light and absolutely patronizing. But not… malicious? Not like Annabelle when she’d come knocking on Jon’s door to hound him. “Whatever you say. Nice to meet a daytime worker. You?” He outstretches one hand – the left one – and Jon has to fight habit to shake it correctly instead of lifting his right. 

“I’m Jonathan Sims. You can call me Jon. I’m guessing you’re Michael?”

The guy shrugs and smiles this time close-lipped and a bit more genuine, “Still thinking about it.”

“Well, update me if that changes I guess.” Jon tries to smile back, feeling the tension in his shoulders fade a bit, “Do you study here?”

Michael’s eyes dart to him, not unkindly, “I do. Architecture.”

Jon smiles wider now, “Oh, that’s splendid then, architecture’s rather fascinating. I hope you’ll do fine with your studies even with the wrench in schedule that today was.”

The word ‘fascinating’ really snaps Michael to favor in Jon’s direction and he angles himself more like he’s engaged in conversation, “Not at all, I prefer a routine of naps rather than sleep, the best pit for creative energy is the mild insanity deprivation comes with hand in hand, heh?” His toothier smile is back.

Jon with enough all-nighters on his credit can only nod, mildly unsettled but infinitely curious.

“You fancy working nights then?”

“Oh it’s wonderous, the strange buzz of night that leaves people wide-eyed at three a.m.” Michael muses and turns to wave at Jared as he comes into the building. Jon usually doesn’t stay late enough to see the other employees. “Does Gerry come to the library every morning?”

The whip-change of topic throws Jon for a moment and he wonders how much information is safe to give, “Why?.”

Michael sways from side to side, one of those deeply restless people, “He’s come in on rare nights and I see him around lectures. His mum’s a professor. Rare bitch.” He shrugs like it’s commonplace knowledge and Jon’s still processing that Gerard’s age is definitely college student then and not just a tall healthy high schooler he sometimes looks like. Then processing that Gerard shows up here during the night-shift too. Then finally the mom part.

“Uh- oh so you know him?”

Michael smiles with a timid sadness, “He’s snappy when he shows up in the evenings though, tired, so not closely.” He then chuckles, “Saw him laugh for the first time today. You mind if I come in on mornings sometimes?”

Jon blinks, a smile creeping onto his face, “Sure, Michael. As long as it doesn’t detriment your health and whatnot… No guarantee for paycheck extensions though. I’ll see what I can do but-”

“Oh, no need, Librarian, I may show up as a,” Michael looks up and laughs again that breathless melodic jingling of his, “Patron.”

“Well.. Um, sure. Glad to have talked to you,” Jon smiles and finds it genuine this time as he picks up his bag and nods to Michael, “But I must get going.”

“Ah, time, hilarious like it’s real, isn’t it?” Michael calls after him. “Face value.”

Jon exits the building, mildly disgruntled over staying late but not severely- for all his unpleasantness upon first impression Michael turned out to be… coherent enough.

Jon drops by the farmer’s market on his way home as it’s much faster to pass through than the detour a shopping mall would be, and purchases eggs, vegetables, and a small very aesthetically alluring jar of honey on a whim that’s also caused him to buy a tiny tiny plastic succulent once as well as a small tape-recorder paper holder that he has never used. At home he immediately crashes for a nap on the opening few minutes of a podcast and wakes up only on the closing jingle, picking himself off the couch and waddling to the kitchen.

Rest day today. That’s good. He puts a documentary up that he already kind of knows the topic of and can, therefore, pay a little less attention to (mistake, he’ll end up devoting _all_ attention to it either way). He puts his kettle to boil and cuts up fresh farmer tomatoes, soft-boils an egg, chops green onion into small loops, adds the latter two to instant ramen and settles onto his couch with the instant noodles and tomatoes. The tomato is one of those you could eat with nothing else and still be immensely content – just perfectly ripe and absolutely delicious. Jon has a few more from the market and wraps them into a clean kitchen towel, places them into a bag, and finds the fishing line.

_Are you in the availability to check your balcony at the moment?  
  
_

_maybe ;0 ?_

  
Jon scribbles ‘ _some fruit for you’_ on a sticky note and places it within the bag. He waits on his balcony for Martin to whisper out into the evening, “Jon?”

“Martin!” Jon begins lowering the bag over the railing, careful to not hurt his fingers under the weight, “You’ve got mail.”

“Oh, wonderful I see the postal system has been fixed and now sends packages through pigeons again.” Martin laughs from downstairs and soon confirms Jon’s bag being received. The weight abates. “Jon you sent me tomatoes? Wow, these _are_ nice- wait, oh you little bastard, you call tomatoes fruit?”

Jon finds himself grinning as he retaliates, “Well, scientifically speaking-”

“I think we all know that tomatoes are a type of nut.” Martin says very seriously and Jon nearly lets go of the fishing line laughing.

He needs to return the favor, “Really, Marin? Really? Calling tomatoes a nut when they’re so obviously a _rodent?_ I don’t understand you.”

“Oh? Care to elaborate?” Martin giggles from under the balcony. Nice!

“Well, for one, their biological structure is very similar to a field mouse’s.” Jon flattens his voice, “Morphologically speaking, the _septa_ of the tomato body is a homologous structure to the skeletal muscle of a rodent.” He wonders where the hell he knows tomato structures from, “Then there is of course the segmented tail of a tomato that is rather elusive and is yet to be photographed, yet its existence makes them – tomatoes, _Solanum lycopersicum_ – rather similar to a rat in that aspect.”

Martin loses it around the word _mouse_ and remains devoid of a comeback, gasping laughing downstairs, whispering, “stop it I can’t breathe”.

“Enjoy the rodent tomatoes, Martin,” he smiles.

“Yeah, yeah, at least they’re not fruit.” Martin tugs on the string and Jon takes the cue to start bringing the bag back up. “Thank you, Jon, I’m a sucker for fresh produce.”

Jon retrieves the bag, full of flowers, his lungs do their funny little dance and he grins, “Thank you in turn. Have a nice night, Martin.”

“You too, Jon.”

Georgie calls him about an hour later for the weekly complaining sessions. They sit in silence for a moment, devoid of clearly established topics to complain about and contemplating how appropriate it is to complain right _now_ when things are turning out much better than they have in years for both parties.

“You look tired, Jon,” Georgie smiles, lying on her couch with the Admiral sleeping on her chest, “How you doing?”

“I got dragged out drinking last night.”

Georgie sits up marginally yet not to bother the cat, “Oh? Oh that is very interesting, how bad did it go?”

“I’m still piecing it together. How’s the lawsuit?”

“They dropped it, all I did was use clips from _Paranormal UK_ to make a point about bad showwriting-”

Jon snorts, “Yeah that’s why they copyright claimed everything, if you waxed poetic about their screenplay, they’d have hired you.”

“Jon please don’t talk about YouTube like you know how it works.”

He bristles, “I watch YouTube.”

“You’d watch any website that had readily available documentaries for free and you know it.”

Jon sits very quietly.

Georgie proceeds to complain about the horror that is the YouTube copyright bot and how emailing them privately did shit _nothing_ until she _publicly_ tweeted at them and got backed by Melanie, at which point Jon interrupts to remark on how both of their names end in ‘ie’ and he doesn’t know what to do with the information but thinks Georgie should also have it.

Georgie then bullies him into sending her a screenshot of the embarrassing email, which he regrets all the way from screenshotting the page to hitting _send_ but also knows he can’t do anything to prevent. He’ll be lucky if he never sees this again, but with his track record, his birthday presents will be wrapped in sheets of this exact picture printed out over and over again.

“Plans for the rest of the week?” Georgie asks him, yawning and it’s time to wrap up.

“No clue, at this point I’ve resigned to take every day in stride- I shouldn’t say resigned.” Jon shrugs, “It’s just a lot of _x_ variables with the recent changes to my life.”

“ _Hah,_ more like _xoxo,_ YEAH?” Georgie pumps her fist, range of motion no longer inhibited now that the Admiral left to do his admiral things.

“Very funny, have you considered stand-up?” Jon smiles despite himself, “You got week plans?

“I might be having pizza with Melanie’s crew after a shoot. She’s left back to her place for now but I might make the trip to her’s on the weekend. They’re shooting at an old prison and I think I’m tagging along!” She does a little dance, “I’ll send you photos so you can amp the contrast and brightness and freak out over seeing shadow shapes again.”

“Georgie, that was _once._ ”

“Oh, I know, the edibles incident is very difficult to forget, I dream of it now and then.”

Jon wrinkles his nose, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Fucking course I am, I wouldn’t want to dream of you freaking out when I get prime feed of that every day regardless, anyway, have fun being haunted!”

“You too, Georgie, have a nice night.”

“Check your chat after this, I’m sending you a meme. Twitter just keeps on giving.”

“Thank you, I dread your involvement in my life.”

They hang up and Jon opens his phone to see Georgie’s already sent a picture along with some ghost emojis and a _sleep tight don’t let the ghost bugs bite._

He knocks out with a history podcast going.

Jon wakes up before dawn again, courtesy of inconsistent sleep schedule and the culmination of a dream where Martin and he were stuck in a wobbly building full of gummy worms and had to get out. He thinks the florist was there too, the one who’d sold him flowers for Martin earlier.

It’s minutes before the sky goes light and he spends them sitting in bed doing his utmost best trying to remember where in town they even sold slushies. The convenience store? Right? But Jon’s been there how many times and has never seen a fucking slushie machine.

It’s okay. Selective blindness. Happens to the best of us, he assures himself, getting dressed, combing his hair to some degree and putting it in a ponytail. Jon leaves his house after sending Martin and Georgie a good morning text, the former apparently asleep and the latter replying with a middle finger emoji. Jon buys two coffees and then hits the convenience store 24/7- and _alas_ there is indeed not _one_ but somehow _two_ slushie machines that Jon has never _once_ seen in his life. He spends a long time attempting to comprehend what type of slushie a person like Michael would even consume- and then derails into an in-depth analysis of Michael’s headspace in a shot at beholding whether he’d prefer ‘tutti-frutti’ or ‘berry mix’- finally deciding to just mix all the flavors because you can’t go wrong with that, right? (Jon’s never had a slushie.)

He carries three drinks to the library quickly to retain the coffee’s warmth and the slushie’s everything. Jon turns the corner and spots Gerry first, and then the offensively highlighter pink sneakers of none other than Michael, sitting on the steps. Jon approaches them and they wave in unison, which he can’t return and hence unloads the drinks onto them immediately, each to their own.

“Thank you, Mr. Jon,” Michael accepts the slushie calmly until registering that the flavor is actually just an array of combinations, resulting in a spiral of colors similar to his attire, “Oh, _thank you,_ Jon.”

“Welcome,” Jon nods, handing Gerry a cup of coffee, who accepts it, still acclimating to being handed things, Jon supposes.

“Michael, don’t you have a key? Could have let yourselves in.” Jon unlocks the staff door as they wait behind him.

“I forgot my kit at the dorms.”

Jon lets them in, “Come again?”

“My lockpicking kit.” Michael turns around and walks backwards, “For the doors.”

He spins back forward and Jon replies a mildly confused ‘okay’ and decides it best to carry on with his day and be proud he guessed right that Michael would turn up the next morning immediately after being granted permission.

Michael hangs around at a table as Gerry vanishes to get his morning reading, returning with old, title-less tomes that Jon knows are the ones you can’t borrow. They slouch over them, turning pages, and Gerry periodically takes notes, and sometimes wheezes surprised laughs at whatever Michael murmurs presumably about the text.

Jon smiles a bit and goes to get his own feed of knowledge for the morning, settling on a star atlas, and that’s another day of work at the library.

Martin texts him later, a bit past lunch,

  
_i need to drop into the florist’s today so i'll be around_   
_do you want me to meet you after work?_

Jon smiles and spins lazily in his office chair, _Yes, Martin, I’d love that._

Martin arrives a few minutes before Jon’s shift would be over and is immediately swarmed by Tim and Sasha, the former practically bouncing and the latter a tad more reserved yet with a glint in her eye that can’t be all too reassuring. Jon watches from the distance of his desk as Martin raises his hands in surrender and produces a Tupperware container of what looks like brownies for the two, seemingly an acceptable payment for Martin’s freedom. Tim and him still chat for a while, standing around the exit, and Jon begins packing up with a light smile on his face, bracing Michael’s timely reappearance from some unconventional location to minimize any unwanted adrenaline.

But Martin appears earlier than the colorful nightmare of one employee can, “Hey, Jon!”

“Hello, Martin,” Jon’s caught _way_ off guard as Martin leans down to peck his cheek. “Feeding the seagulls, I see?”

They both look over to see Tim and Sasha eating brownies in the doorjamb of the staff room.

Martin nods, “Gotta support the local ecosystem,” he turns to Jon, offering to carry his bag, “which includes you too, so you’re not safe!”

Jon chuckles, “Oh no, and here I was hoping the government would let me remain endangered-”

“I could help with that,” Michael appears from vaguely behind them.

Jon nearly jumps out of his skin, “Michael!”

The kid laughs like a weird jingle, “I suppose so! Good afternoon, librarian.” He’s wearing something new, which Jon usually wouldn’t notice if the difference between every outfit wasn’t like whiplash. He’s wearing toxic yellow leggings under pink jean shorts along with a Hawaiian print long-sleeve. There’s emojis on it.

Martin looks at Michael with vague familiarity and mild uneasiness yet still waves at him out of politeness. Michael actually waves back without much malice, before turning back to Jon with a severely sharper smile. Jon gets the sense that Sasha isn’t the only person who likes bullying him for fun. 

Who must be Jude comes in through the staff door, and now with two night shift members there, Jon is fully licensed to get out. Upon insistence, he does let Martin carry his bag, and they drift out of the building soon after Tim and Sasha do.

“What were you doing at the florist’s?” Jon soaks in the fresh air of outside, Martin starting on the way home.

“It’s a small business and sometimes she’ll give me bush saplings to grow out a bit taller until I return them. For space’s sake, really.” Martin shrugs, the wind tousling his hair and demanding absolutely _all_ of Jon’s attention. “Plus, I used to work there and it’s always nice to catch up.”

They walk in tandem, and Jon hums, snaking his hand into Martin’s, “Get fired for eating the flowers?”

“Oh no, you’ve caught me,” Martin deadpans, “my dirty secret, I live solely off of flowers I grow.”

Jon laughs back, “And now you storm the shop and freak out the employees, I see, I see.”

Martin butts his bottom lip out in mock sadness, “Will you still hold my hand,” he brings their hands up as they walk “Now that you know this shameful deed of mine?”

“At least you’re not a lizard person,” Jon shrugs and scrapes up enough bravery to kiss Martin’s knuckles where their hands are brought up at shoulder level.

“I’ll let you keep thinking that,” Martin grins, “And on the topic of lizard people-”

“ _What_ kind of segway is this, Martin,” Jon looks at him with severe suspicion.

“A history museum is opening twenty minutes from here and Annabelle is forcing everyone to go, which now includes you too. All I’m doing is spreading the word as I am apparently her left-hand man when it comes to group outings.”

“Wow- um, yeah, sure. Who else is coming?”

“Sasha and Tim probably, of course then Annabelle herself, Jane. Plus myself and you, that is if nothing turns up on your account that will make you mysteriously disappear and be unable to participate, so you can sit in your flat and watch director commentary for movies you’ve never seen.”

“ _Martin!_ What a callout, you’re dangerous to my self-awareness.” Jon tuts, “No, I’ll go, I’m rather fond of museums.”

“Somehow, I expected that sentiment,” Martin smiles softly, “They apparently have a group discount there and we need at _least_ three more people, though. Annabelle’s offered grabbing random passerbies off the street and just forcing them to join for the price. And then _hopefully_ letting them wander off.”

Jon nods, enjoying the swing of Martin’s hand as they walk home, as well as the novelty of being bag-less.

“I can’t believe Annabelle’s run out of friends.”

Martin hums, shrugging, “She’s got a bunch of older folk she’s familiar with too, but the last time she invited both our demographic and a number of fifty-year-olds to the same bowling alley, everyone made her promise to never do that again.”

It startles a laugh out of Jon, “Really that bad?”

“Tim snuck alcohol in in a cowboy hat.”

“Wait like just a hat filled with-”

“No, no, no, god forbid, he hid a bag of it inside and wore the hat in.”

“A _bag?_ ” Jon stares at the sidewalk, “Every day I respect the man more.”

“Careful, Sasha’ll murder you in cold blood if you bash on his innovations. Anyway, yeah, Annabelle’s looking to gather everyone on the weekend if she gets the spots to fill up. I think she’s looking at Tim’s brother but he’s never been too fond of hanging out with _‘Tim’s loser friends’_.”

“Well, when the shoe fits-” Jon begins jokingly but Martin bumps their shoulders and cuts him off.

“That includes _you_ now, so don’t go about thinking you’ll get off scot-free.” Martin winks and smiles and the evening is sunny and pleasant and Jon’s promise about never letting this man out of his life is finally pulled from the depths of vague feeling and is acknowledged consciously, which will only ever go to reinforce it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so since this has taken up a lot of my braincells i cant help but draw some stuff from it (some jon and some gerry michael content, so far) and that can now be found here on Tumblr  
> https://22ratonthestreeet.tumblr.com/
> 
> (sue me, i don't know how to encode links, shit)  
> its not a lot but ey...  
> you can also hit me up there, come shout at me, ill shout back  
> NEXT: THE GAYS GO TO LOOK AT DUSTY HISTORY


	8. idiot carpool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More people are needed for the museum hangout and maybe for once Jon has a good idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry updates have slowed down! work's a bit intense now so I'm hoping to juggle that and this a bit better, lets go lesbians lets go
> 
> you might've also seen this is now part of a series! I'm going to be writing out Michael and Gerry's part of the story in another fic since i... i love them, man

He’s a few minutes out of bed and enjoying the morning air on his balcony when Jon receives a call from an unknown number. For all his anxiety about strangers and the dread of holding a conversation, curiosity wins over.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Jon?”

He sighs, “Annabelle.”

“Glad to see you too,” she audibly grins and Jon momentarily wonders if she can, indeed, see him. “Help a girl out, and I am _really_ going out on a limb here, but do you know any other people who might enjoy a museum trip. I am at the end of my resources.”

Jon frowns down at Castor and Pollux he was mid-watering, “Um, most of my friends aren’t in the area.”

“Wow, you actually have… other friends?” She hums, “Well I did get Tim’s brother to agree, but that’s only one.”

"So you need two more people?"

"Yes. We'd all like to save some money looking at old artifacts white people stole centuries ago."

"Touche, can't you do a, um... Twitter give away? You know, free spots to hang out with Martin or yourself? Why are you calling me."

Annabelle is quiet for a moment, "You know what Twitter is?"

"Regrettably," Jon attempts to channel as much resignation as he can into the reply as he sets the water down and simply looks out off his balcony.

"Heh, well, while you seem to know it, I somehow doubt you _understand_ it. And understand the potentially disastrous stipulations of offering a day out with us on a short notice. People can be rather... intense, Jon." The way she's still smiling makes him think she's alluding to his own poor life choices.

"Okay, well, outside of you guys and my coworkers I haven't really met anyone here on a strong enough basis to invite them... places." Jon frowns at a lamppost.

“What a miserable existence, well, I’ll go see if any of my sweet but rather traditionally-minded acquaintances might be up for walking around on their old person knees.”

“Splendid, glad to be of entertainment. Also please never call me this early again."

"Well, you were up,” Annabelle makes a kissy noise over the phone, "Have a wonderful day, sweety, save my number."

She hangs up and he looks out over the sunrise, mildly disgruntled that the very beginning of his day has been stained by Annabelle's mingling. He saves her as _Haunted Doll Movie_ and goes about getting ready for work mostly on autopilot as he lets a history podcast play on in the background.

He leaves his house, texts Martin about if he'd given Annabelle his number, follows that up with some infodump facts from said podcast, and walks briskly to the Library. Michael and Gerard are hanging around at the entrance, and as Jon gets closer, he sees Michael deftly setting up a game of cats cradle, which Gerard continuously messes up on his turns. Jon lets them in and picks an illustrated ‘history of the circus’ book. Martin texts him that _no, but I wouldn’t be surprised if annabelle… found it._

Jon sighs and looks up to the two other lone patrons of the library and sees Gerard had gotten up to look through the bookshelves again, back turned to Michael. Who’s watching him with tired, but immensely attentive eyes, chin resting on his wrist and finger drawing spirals on the table's surface, spacing out the way people do when they're watching fire. Jon pulls up his phone and texts _Haunted Doll Movie._

_I think I might have the two candidates you were missing._

He waits for Gerry to pick out the book he needed before Jon gets up to join their table.

“I’d like to apologize in advance, as this is rather out of the blue, but some of my, um, friends are putting together a trip to the new museum and we need two more people for a discount. Would you two like to tag along? Once we get tickets you’ll be able to split off, as I understand you might not be too riveted to hang out with the rest of us.”

The two kids stare at him, Gerry with his inherent shock at being interacted with and Michael, once more, bearing a challenging glint in his eye.

Michael leans back in his seat like an abandoned Halloween decoration, “How do we know this isn’t a kidnapping?”

Jon levels him with a squint, “you look more smug than worried so I’ll assume a kidnapping wouldn’t bother you too much.”

Michael’s eyebrows shoot up and he nods like Jon’s won something, and looks done with talking, at which point Gerry kicks in.

“Could we have some more details about this?”

Jon nods, “I can put you in contact with Annabelle, who’s putting this together, but it’ll be myself, the guys from the day shift, and a few others. We’ll probably carpool there, which is about twenty minutes, and then get tickets at the group discount. And then it’s free reign, the museum’s just opened so they’re doing the discount for a week only. Hence we’re scrambling for two more people.”

Gerry looks back at Michael who’s watching him already. They stare at each other for a moment and then both turn back to Jon and nod, Michael looking skeptical but also red in the face. Jon nods and lets Gerry copy Annabelle’s number, as well as Jon’s own.

By the end of the day, Annabelle creates a group chat. Jon mutes it the moment he sees that the member count is up at nine.

Martin then sends a polite and comprehensive text detailing the address of the museum, the address they’ll all meet at for the carpool, and the times at which to show up. Jon inexplicably feels like he’s partaking in a school field trip.

They’re at Martin’s and there’s a pleasant aftertaste of strawberry rolls in Jon’s mouth. He lies on the couch with Martin on top of him, head cushioned on Jon’s chest. They’d zoned out on reruns of the Bachelor, and now Jon runs his fingers through Martin’s hair. Out of nowhere, Martin pipes up, “I should dye it again.”

“What color?” Now the ends are pink but the crown of his head had started to grow back out into its natural hue.

“No clue.”

Jon laughs lightly, “Sure, I’m convinced you’d look dashing with any color of the rainbow.”

“Then I’ll pick white just to spite you,” Martin’s audibly smiling.

“Tough luck, white is every color.”

Martin gasps against his shirt, “ _Fuck._ What’s the color that’s not a color- black, right?”

“Mm, the absence of color,” Jon scratches Martin’s scalp methodically, “There’s also magenta.”

“What about magenta?” Martin sits up a bit to rest his chin on Jon’s chest and look straight up at him, “What’s up with that hot hot putrid pink?”

“It’s not a real color.” Jon looks down at him and traces the smattering of freckles on Martin’s face, “It’s not on the color spectrum.” He fixes Martin’s glasses for him as they’d become skewed and jumps a bit when Martin leans over to kiss his hand.

“I own things in magenta and I’m pretty sure it’s a color I can see,” Martin leans over to lower the volume on the tv and Jon can feel himself blush at being listened to.

“If green is yellow and blue mixed, what’s magenta?”

“Um, purple and red.”

“Well, if you look at the visible color spectrum, those two colors are at opposite sides with vastly different wavelengths, how can they then combine for a midpoint? They can’t, the color is just the brain’s best guess at what red and purple look like together.”

“I…” Martin spaces out looking just past Jon’s ear, eyebrows up in his hair and chin digging into Jon’s sternum. “I see where you’re coming from but I wish I didn’t know this,” he turns back to lay his head on Jon’s chest and hugs him where his arms snake around Jon’s torso.

This pulls a laugh out of Jon, “Sorry, sorry.”

“Guess I’m dyeing my hair magenta and then everyone who comments on it, I’ll share this piece of knowledge with them. You ever dyed anyone hair?”

“Yes, actually.”

Martin looks up at him again, surprised, “Your own? Please tell me you’ve dyed your hair something embarrassing in high school.”

Jon laughs, “God forbid, I dyed Georgie’s a few times.”

“Mm, then you can help me. It’d also be a good video idea… Hey Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“You mind being on my channel? Boyfriend dyes my hair challenge?”

Jon jabs Martin’s shoulder, “It’d wouldn’t be a _challenge_ , I’m almost a professional at it, mind you.” There’s roses being handed out on screen and Martin hums again. Jon thinks about becoming practically public domain and supposes he’s been on the outskirts of social media for a long time, appearing on Melanie’s channel and doing voice-overs for some of the conspiracy ones his old college buddies kept. And Martin’s endlessly convincing if it includes spending time with him, so really it’s not even a thinking matter, “and no, I don’t mind, I’d love to.”

Martin pronounces a quiet _heheheheh_ and hugs Jon again, “That’s great news, I can’t wait to flaunt you.”

“Martin!”

“What???” Martin wriggles upwards to kiss Jon on the cheek, “You’re a catch and I’m adamant on holding on now that I’ve caught you.”

“Good for you that I’m not interested in somehow counteracting these measures,” he hugs Martin back, “I’m very happy where you’ve got me.” He kisses Martin faster than his brain can start processing the admission. The Bachelor plays on in the background as they lie on the couch and kiss, Jon successfully distracted from confronting the overwhelming realization that he is, indeed, happy.

The weekend starts with a lot of things at once.

Jon wakes up minorly groggy, having taken forever to fall asleep, mind working through the possibilities of tomorrow: a truly sordid attempt, seeing that the group would be nine whole people he was trying to predict the conversations of. In the end, after hypothesizing yet another possible social disaster, Jon had relented and turned on a podcast about birdwatching in order to knock him out with distraction.

He wakes up already buzzing with energy. Having plans for a weekend is wild.

Georgie sends him selfies from a van with Melanie’s filming crew all grinning the way that people who got up at 5am do. The museum trip group chat, now apparently titled _lets go lesbians lets go_ displays an array of confessions that some people might be late. Notably, Tim, Sasha, and Michael. Immediately followed by Annabelle’s berating text of that it’s still hours from the appointed meet-up time so how the hell do they know this far in advance if they’ll be late or not.

Jon gets dressed in a plaid shirt over some of Melanie’s merch and grabs all necessary belongings like phone and wallet, before going downstairs to meet up with Martin. Martin opens the door half-dressed and goes back to getting ready, all the while complaining about Jon being far too prepared. Jon pulls up the list of sandwich orders from group chat and they set to putting together everyone’s lunches. Tim and Sasha are bringing fruit and Michael had promised to bring ‘drink’ without any further specification.

“Okay, then we have tomato and cheese for Tim’s brother-”

“Danny.”

“Uh huh, tomato and cheese for Danny, and then Michael wrote ‘whatever’s fine’ and I’m not sure how to interpret that.”

Martin nods, “You work with him, do you know what he likes?”

“Slushies?” Jon looks out at the kitchen wall, plastered in recipe papers, “I’ve talked to him maybe twice and I haven’t necessarily liked either interaction.”

His words pull a chuckle out of Martin, “Then why invite him?”

“Annabelle was desperate apparently, and I think the um- bloody hell, I still don’t know his name, the goth kid, anyway I thought they wouldn’t mind hanging out somewhere together.” To Jon’s greatest annoyance Gerard’s name in the group chat was _Gerard_ meaning he’d decided to make his profile after MCR and had further thwarted Jon’s attempts at locating his real name.

“Oh?” Martin starts cutting tomatoes, “Is this a friends hang out or an ‘I am playing cupid now on these poor souls’ kind of hang out?”

“Very funny,” Jon smiles at him as he passes the bread over, “I try not to get into other people’s business but I think they’re an… interesting clash of very opposing personalities. Whatever that means or will lead to.”

“Soap opera in real life, don’t worry I’ll stop you if you manage to make it weird.” Martin leans over to kiss Jon’s cheek but misses and kisses his ear instead, causing Jon to flinch from the weird feeling and almost drop the head of lettuce he’s holding. Martin tries to apologize while laughing as he leans back in to actually kiss Jon properly.

“Yes, yes, Martin, I trust you to be a reliable buffer for interaction, thank you.”

“I’m kidding, it’s a group outing, you’ll be fine.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t be fine.” Jon frowns down at his hands as he peels leaves off the cabbage. “What makes you think I wouldn’t be fine? I’m fine, I know most of- uh, I know some, a few, of the people we’re going with, it’s fine, I’m fine. Of course I’ll be fine.” He bores his eyes into the lettuce like it’ll grant him the freedom of fighting the day one task at a time. Martin’s arms appear practically out of nowhere and wrap around Jon from behind. He hugs him close and rests his chin on Jon’s head.

“You’ve been fidgety all morning, you’ll be okay, they all like you. You’re not the only weird one here, everyone’s just a tad bit deranged, and I’m sure the other two you invited are just the same.”

“I’m never the weird one,” Jon squawks even as he melts just a bit, knees going relaxed and trusting Martin to hold him up.

“Uh huh, sure thing babe,” Martin presses his nose into Jon’s hair. They go back to making lunch and Jon thinks about _babe_ much harder than he does about the upcoming socialization.

As they’re leaving the apartment the group chat is alight with more excuses for being late- in the midst of which comes Jane’s text: _m here early sorry:(_

Annabelle immediately begins waxing poetics about how at least _someone_ is doing their best to not keep the group waiting, all of which Jon narrates to Martin as they walk, elbows locked. Danny will be picking them all up in his van as he happens to be the only member going that has a car big enough, or a car at all.

They approach the meeting spot where a small woman stands, visible even from far away due to her red dress. As they get closer, Jon is suddenly hit with the realization that ‘Jane’ is the local florist who he bothered to his poisonous bouquet not too long ago.

Martin waves to her enthusiastically and she waves back, smiling and somehow stably supporting a rather big backpack on her narrow shoulders.

“Hello,” she smiles pleasantly, looking exhausted on a natural level. “Martin, Jon, I’m happy to see you two well,” she nods at them and Jon can only nod back.

“Hey Jane,” Martin beams back at her, “How’s the shop been?”

She shrugs a bit, movements very loose, “I don’t regret a day in my life, Martin, the flowers are better company than the crystals could ever prove to be.”

Jon looks between the two of them and Martin must notice, he looks down at Jon with a smile, “Jon, this is Jane, my past coworker and good friend, Jane, this is Jon, my boyfriend and neighbor.”

Jon waves at her awkwardly and she seems unbothered, waving back with the same dopy smile, basking in sunshine, “Hello, Jon, I’ve heard a lot of things about you.”

“Um, thanks?” Jon glances back up at Martin who’s gone red. “How long have you guys known each other?”

The two stare at each other, squinting, “Two years?” Martin ventures.

“Had the misfortune to meet before I grew common sense and he grew some cells of the brain.”

“Jane!”

“Hm? You thought you could get good money from the _crystal_ business, Martin. And Jon, if you want any dirt on your boyfriend, I have a lot to share with you, after all, we’re all in this world together. Why not exchange some history?”

Jon presses into Martin’s side a bit out of reflex, “I think I’m fine, thank you.”

She nods, calm smile unwavering, “I’ll let the offer stand, yet I’m happy for you two, I didn’t think you’d survive,” she looks at Martin on the last bit without malice, then her eyes dodge to behind the two, “Oh, are we in trouble?”

They turn around to see Gerard approaching from across the street, hands stuffed in his pockets.

“Oh, no, he’s with us,” Jon says in the vague direction of Jane and waves at Gerard who waves back politely. Jon dreads introducing Gerard and giving away that he doesn’t know his name.

But for all’s the better: Gerard finally gets to them and sticks his hand out to first Jane, then Martin: “Good morning, my name is Gerard.”

Jon almost swallows his tongue.

Martin and Jane shake his hand, introducing themselves, and Jon’s caught in the moment like something’s slapped him into uncanny valley. As he’s still attempting to buffer through the unimaginable occurrence, Tim and Sasha show up, almost immediately splitting off: Tim to shitpost at Martin and Sasha to coo at _Gerard_ Gerard. Martin wrapped his arm around Jon’s shoulders and it did go ways to mitigate the anxiety of being in a group, soon after which the van arrived, windows rolled down to display Annabelle and Danny, blasting All Star.

“Hello, bitches,” Annabelle removes her sunglasses, “Everyone here?”

“Michael’s still missing,” Gerard pipes up as Tim slides the van door open with familiarity, black and spray-painted with orange and yellow patterns.

“Okay, get in everyone, if there’s something on a seat feel free to toss it on the floor,” Danny shouts from the driver’s seat, “Tim, don’t leave any trash!”

“Why are you calling out me, what have I ever done, shithead?” Tim hollers as he slams into a seat like he owns it, Sasha settling next to him.

“I don’t want to hear any of this,” Danny snaps at him with the underlying brotherly ease, “Can someone text the Michael?”

Jon sees Gerard pull his phone out with an affirmative and meanwhile lets Martin haul him into the van.

“He says he’s almost there,” Gerard (yes!! just Gerard! straight-up Gerard!) looks back up from his phone, “Is that okay?” he climbs into the van too and sets his eyes immediately on the backseat. The car rumbles with affirmatives to that it’s no problem which are effectively canceled out by Michael slamming into the window that Gerard had leaned on.

“Michael!” Gerard snaps at the jumpscare of a man that Michael is, “God, you’re a fucking idiot.”

“My pleasure,” Michael climbs into the van and closes the door after himself, “As you might have figured, I’m Michael, and I’m absolutely not interested in anyone’s names.” He clatters his way to the backseat too and collapses almost entirely over Gerard, which causes more scuffling, and Danny cranks the music up as he hits the gas, and they’re off to fulfill Annabelle’s museum plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chap is the museum! hell yeah
> 
> crystallineTaipan commented on last chapter about how big Tim's alcohol hat was, which made me really Think about it and come to a cursed conclusion: tall hat. which i then couldn't just NOT draw, so, that can be found [here](https://22ratonthestreeet.tumblr.com/post/618079861381152768/tim-snuck-alcohol-in-in-a-cowboy-hat-wait-like) on my tumblr
> 
> thanks for reading ! <3


	9. one ugly fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if they went to look at Mesopotamian plates and held hands... and they were both boys?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im REALLY sorry updates slowed down but I've been dealing w coursework this week, and now that that's finally over i can go back to posting more often!  
> thank you all for being patient and understanding, it means a lot 
> 
> important!  
> \- no, this fic will not get abandoned! that would contradict all the serotonin i make jon experience and it wouldn't be fair, so worry not!  
> \- even if i allude to aspects of canon in this (like the wax museum) there will never be any seriously dramatic conflict/issues in here! everything always will get a good, non-stressful resolution and everyone will be ok

“Okay,” Annabelle addresses the van over the back of her seat, “As has been determined through research, there are only a few competent people in this vehicle, myself being one. Once we get there, I’d like to warn people against going apeshit and touching a cursed vase somewhere down the line.”

A chorus of ‘aye-aye’ ripples through Annabelle’s untowardly herd.

Jon hears Martin snort at this and is suddenly hyper-aware of a memory wherein he did indeed breach a museum’s crowd-separator ropes as a child to touch some old book on display. His grandma didn't let him forget it for the next decade and he's sure that they're still banned from that museum. He’s definitely learned, though.

The building is magnificent. Tall and a masterful mimicry of old architecture, a tribute to what it holds.

Annabelle directs them all rather effectively, given the amount of people she’s attempting to safely deliver to the ticket window. Jon catches her pleading eyes a few times and supposes Martin was supposed to be of help as another mom-friend, but Jon’s attached to his elbow like a python and soaks up all the attention. With zero guilt about it too. 

It’s a very clean, clean interior, almost unreal in the newness of pillars and floors, nothing’s chipped, nothing’s smudged. There’s advertisements for new exhibits adorning the walls, _Ancient Texts Never Before Seen,_ and _Robert Smirke’s Work Showcase_ and _All Brand-New Wax Museum Open!_ that Jon studies as they walk underneath, relying on where he’s gripped Martin’s arm to guide him. Martin knits their fingers and continues chatting with Jane about horoscopes. His hand’s warm and slightly damp, which makes Jon tons less self-conscious, as he’s been made aware he sweats when he’s nervous. There's a sizable amount of people here but definitely far less than some places Jon's been where you had to sit on someone's shoulders to see an exhibit. He remembers being small and snaking between people's legs to get to the front of the crowd and look at some ancient gorilla skin or something. Jon almost walks into Michael’s back as they all round-up for the ticket desk.

“Oh? The librarian.” Michael turns around like a provoked omnivore. Jon could’ve sworn Michael’s eyes weren’t yellow last time.

“Hello, Michael.” Jon attempts to retaliate politely, aware he should’ve been much more aware of his surroundings, as to avoid any such altercation, and scrambles for something else polite to say. “I’m glad you could make it.”

Manners seem to slide off Michael like water off a goose.

“Wish I could return the sentiment, utmost,” he grins like a funhouse mirror, looming a bit over Jon, “And yet, I am here through little choice of my own.”

Jon must notably shrink away because Martin’s suddenly an avid participator of the conversation.

“Oh! Michael,” Martin smiles openly and doesn’t let up on where he’s holding Jon’s hand, “don’t threaten my boyfriend.”

This is hugely amusing to Michael who straightens back out and lifts his pale eyebrows, “Threatening me _back?_ How riveting. And with what?”

Jon looks up at Martin who shrugs and smiles, “Hey, Gerard?”

All three look over to Gerard, who sharply snaps up from his phone, “Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but Michael’s being a tad bit menacing,” Martin speaks with an easy grin and Jon notices how Michael immediately frowns and butts his bottom lip out.

Gerard pockets his phone and comes over to them in two long steps, “I bring my apologies,” he then fists his hand into Michael’s sleeve and drags him to the other side of the group.

“That worked?” Jon blinks after them.

“That worked.” 

“How’d you know it would?”

Martin leans down and plants a kiss on the crown of Jon’s head, “Gut instinct. And Michael was quiet most of the car ride, which I was honestly not expecting. He kicked my seat three times and then Gerard started talking about guitar stringing and immediately restored peace in the backseat domain.”

“And we all lived together in harmony.” Jon nods, cushioning his head against Martin’s shoulder. “Until the fire nation attacked.” He frowns, “Where is that from?”

“You’ve watched Avatar?”

“Yeah, I went to see it when it came out. I can't believe they're making sequels so many years later.”

“No, no, Avatar the Last Airbender, the animated series?”

Jon frowns, “I’m not sure what that is. Is that where the quote’s from?”

Martin whistles lowly as Jane drifts in, practically out of nowhere, “I heard someone say Avatar.”

In the true spirit of chain reaction, this pulls Tim into the conversation too, “What’s going on?”

Martin drapes an arm around Jon’s shoulder, “My boyfriend whom I love very dearly hasn’t watched Avatar but has quoted the opening sequence.”

Between Martin’s arm, ' _whom I love very dearly',_ and learning that there’s different Avatar movies that aren’t CGI blue people, Jon is multitasking to stay with the conversation, “What opening sequence?”

Jane spreads her arms in a slow, open movement, “ _Water. Earth. Fire. Air._ ”

Tim joins in by _Fire_ and they both close their eyes, assuming different dramatic poses, “ _Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony._ ”

Sasha’s sad ‘oh no’ can be heard as Martin begrudgingly joins in, jostling Jon as he puts movement into the words: “ _Then……… Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.”_

Jon makes startled eye contact with Gerard and Michael, who are watching them from a distance, mid-conversation.

“ _A hundred years passed and-_ “ Martin stops, jumping a little and rocking Jon a tiny bit off-axis. Jane swallows her words next and it’s just Tim going _my brother and I discovered the new Avatar-_ until he too notices the silence and peters off, straightening up. Jon watches realization dawn on his face as he slowly turns around to where the others are looking.

Annabelle stares at them with an arrow-sharp intensity.

Jon is immensely glad for never watching Avatar and therefore being (hopefully) left out of the demographic currently in danger. It’s _very_ quiet for a few seconds, Sasha stubbornly staring into her phone and Danny standing there with his hands in his pockets, mourning his brother. Jon remembers that for all the familiarity he’s had time to develop concerning Annabelle, brushing over her ability to render one a deer in the headlights is not to be forgotten.

“Okay.” She turns back to the front desk worker and there’s a collective exhale from the group, aware of the danger that’s just come to pass, and carefully relieved, having been pardoned from murder.

Jon unclenches his fingers from where he’d unconsciously dug them into Martin’s shirt.

“Alright, maybe let’s wait until she’s not stressing out about tickets to do that.” Martin laughs a little, shooting Tim a pity-gaze.

“Good plan, I’ll save my replicas for later,” Tim huffs lightly, leaning on Danny’s shoulder, who’s ignoring them in favor of helping Annabelle rule out the discount prices for both a group and a universal pass to both the main area and the specialty exhibitions.

Jon carefully leans up on his tiptoes to murmur into Martin’s ear, “So what’s the other Avatar?”

Martin kisses his cheek, “An animated series about, rudimentarily, control over one of the four elements. Rudimentarily. And don’t worry, I think this is good basis for a group movie night marathon, how’s that sound?”

Jon leans his head on Martin’s shoulder again, watching Sasha evade Tim’s attempts at picking her up, Jane drift over to poke over Annabelle’s shoulder as if carried by invisible currents- and can’t imagine watching something in relative peace with all of these individuals in the vicinity of the same couch.

“I’ll… think about it.”

Annabelle pivots to look at them, hands palm-to-palm at her chest, very calm, “Good news, I have got everything settled, no matter the…” she looks at Tim _specifically,_ “circumstances.”

He gasps, “Hey, now that’s just targeted bullying, I was the _last_ person to join. Blame Martin.”

Martin whines, “Don’t blame me!” at the same time as Jon blurts, “Don’t blame Martin!”

Jane leans an elbow on Annabelle’s shoulder calmly, “It’s okay, you can blame me.”

“You did nothing wrong.” Annabelle tilts her head to talk to her, then looks back up at the group, “Alright, we’ve got the tickets, here you go,” she hands two to Michael and Gerard, off to the side, “You can wander on your own if you want to, or stick around. Either way, we’ll need to decide on a place and time for lunch, and meet then.” She hands out more tickets, Jon accepting both, for himself and Martin, “There’s an indoor park, apparently, or a garden. The pamphlet wasn’t clear but we’ll see. Get a map, get familiar, and don’t get lost.” She scans the group, looking a tad bit manic. Jon notes the endeared expressions Martin and Jane are looking at her with.

“Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone’s planning on dying.” Martin gives her a thumbs up.

“But if they are, I’m sure they planned to leave you at the top of the suspect list,” Tim winks and immediately receives a dirty glare from Danny and Sasha.

Annabelle levels him an icy look, “Trust me, I doubt authorities would suspect foul play if you perished, you’re just asking for an accident to happen.”

Sasha loops an arm around Tim’s waist before he can start arguing, “I’ll keep this man out of as many accidents as I can.”

“Might be hard, seeing as that he’s an accident already,” Danny grins and Tim cuffs him upside the head lightly.

“Thanks, planned baby. At least I’m funny.”

Danny frowns, “That’s subjective.”

“I don’t think so, I have more twitter followers than you.”

Annabelle pats Danny on the shoulder, “Some battles are to be left alone. None’s the matter, let’s meet back in three hours for lunch, keep an eye on the group chat, yeah?”

Jon joins in on the new wave of aye-ayes and they head to the ticket checking, Gerard and Michael in the lead a few meters ahead of them, Jane pleasantly singing under her breath somewhere behind Jon and Martin. Martin whistles along to it a few times and Jon feels like he recognizes the melody.

“What song is this?”

“Hm?” Martin looks down, then readjusts his glasses, “Oh, hrm, it doesn’t have a name yet. Jane’s been working on it on and off for a few weeks.”

“She writes music?”

“Yeah, she’s been featured on the local radio a few times, it’s pretty cool.”

Jon scours his brain for where he's met the song, having not only never listened to local radio, but having been unaware there _was_ a local radio, “You guys should form a band, Jane on the vocals, you on guitar. Tim too. I think I’ve heard him cover All Star at work once. Quite well too.”

“On what?”

Jon sighs, “A harmonica.”

Martin laughs merrily as they climb a set of shining marble steps, “You joke but I’ve been practically condemned into performing acoustic demos of her music so she can test out the tune. For all her singing, Jane is sheet-music illiterate.”

“I’ll keep my lips sealed and not give Tim any ideas about officializing bands, then.” Jon nods. Gerard and Michael have already passed through the ticket checking and continue walking, Gerard turning around to give one final wave which Jon feels both honored and obligated to return. Michael doesn’t turn back at all, bopping off excitedly, bouncing his sequin-lathered backpack with every step as they duck into an exhibit seemingly at random.

“Small mercies.” Martin hums and they’re next in line, handing in their tickets. The girl who accepts them looks practically unreal in how standard her features are and Jon swears she’s got a little bit of every celebrity and every grocery store clerk in her. He’s noticed the same with the bellboy (?) (why does a museum need… someone dressed like a bellboy?) at the entrance, looking like an AI was told to compile a human face using every Instagram model ever. A rather strange museum and its rather strange workers.

They’re let through and now with full access to every piece of history’s remains, Jon’s beginning to _very_ quickly feel his infatuation with museums resurface.

Annabelle flashes Martin a peace sign as she splits off towards the photobooths, trailed by Jane and Danny. Tim and Sasha wander into the middle of the atrium-like center to loiter and look at the pamphlet map provided, and Martin relinks his and Jon’s hand, looking at Jon expectantly.

Jon blinks back at him, a bit startled to be put in charge, and takes a sweep of the large room with its patrons, large wall of mosaiced window, information desk….

The moment his eyes land on the _Ancient History and Civilizations_ sign over an arching entrance to an exhibit, he’s practically possessed, can feel it in his stride and its instantly locked target. Martin goes along with zero resistance and they cross into a dimmer lit world of artifacts.

The first stretch of hallway is mostly infographics about the birth of civilization, shit Jon’s seen a million times, starting at age five when his grandmother asked him what he wanted for his birthday – and Jon does not remember this ever happening, but she’s retold him this story an inappropriate amount of times – at which he’d _apparently_ requested going to a museum. And then it was being the teacher’s pet for his history classes throughout middle and high school. Taking extra history courses in college. The mainstream side to wars and green revolutions had lost much of its appeal after grade five, but there were still small nuggets here and there, specific cave paintings, the first-ever recorded photograph of a cat, the way humor had developed throughout the ages. That's what he lived to learn about.

It was the small, endearing remnants of humanity’s legacy that cropped up when pouring over old texts and statements at night in his room, finding internet archives with no paywalls, reading badly scanned, barely legible pdfs because they were fascinating accounts of a sheep-herder’s life in 1620. Now Jon breaths in the stale, air-conditioned smell of ancient artifacts mingled with brand new tiling and feels himself begin to involuntarily smile.

“Small warning, I may become utterly enthralled with reading the description to a set of old clay plates and might accidentally tune you out, I am sorry in advance,” he speaks quietly, tilting his head up at Martin who snorts.

“As long as you tell me some cool facts, dear. I’m pretty sure you know things beyond what will be written on those description panels.”

Jon tries not to trip.

“S-sure, just, um, you tell me if I start getting too absorbed.”

“In exchange for Mesopotamia facts.”

They keep wandering into the hall, the first few glass stands in sight, at which small smatterings of people gather and move on.

“Is that a generalization or do you want… actual Mesopotamia facts?”

“You got some just off the top of your head?”

They stop in front of a chest-level display of chipped spoons, and Jon soaks them in detail after detail, absently remembering some of the requested-for facts, “The first-ever poet whose name we know is attributed to being a Mesopotamian writer of hymns for the temple she was an overseer of. Priestess Enheduanna, if I’m remembering correctly.”

Martin studies the spoons too, “Oh! Have any of her poems survived?”

“I believe so, but I’m not one for memorizing poetry… Or, well, not one for poetry at all, I suppose.”

Martin detangles their hands to pull out his phone and sends Jon into deep mourning.

“I’m surprised, I pinned you for a high school Shakespeare Hamlet production kind of guy,” Martin straightens up from the spoons to stare into his phone. Jon’s endlessly glad that the screen will probably blind Martin in the dimmer lights of the hall and save Jon from being seen blushing.

“No comment.”

They drift to the next display, Jon carving the spoon details deep into his general cloud of information on ancient civilization.

“Hm, I found someone’s translation of the poetry.” Martin catches up to Jon at the next glass case of cutlery, featuring cuneiform imprinted around the border of a plate. “Wow, okay, there’s a lot.” Jon can hear Martin read under his breath for a while, before scrolling further, “It’s mostly about their gods and the… things they’re doing. Pretty cool.”

Jon rips his attention off the plate and instead comes to invade Martin’s line of view to look at his screen too,

_so from your skin of bricks_

_on the rim of the holy hill green as mountains_

_you determine fates_

Jon glances up and sees the verse is about either Annuna or Ningirsu, but he’s never been good at understanding poetry. So he could be completely wrong and it’s about someone wholly different. Fuck he hates trying to understand purposefully muddled things cause someone thought they could be all creative about making words disjointed.

“Lovely…” Jon wrinkles his nose and leans away.

“ _Wow,_ Jon, is it _really that bad_?” Martin grins as he repockets his phone, squinting.

“It the poem or-”

“ _It_ like your relationship with poetry. What about music? That’s practically poems.”

“That's right. _Practically._ They could’ve just added a tune to it and made a song, it’s one breath away from being lyrics anyway, why leave three words on a page and call it a poem, huh?” Jon waves his hand around which gets Martin to catch it and weave their fingers together again, “There’s a famous poem that’s barely a sentence and they made us study it in freshman year. A _sentence,_ Martin.”

“Is it a good sentence?”

“I don’t bloody _know_ , how am I supposed to judge a sentence? It’s something like _‘The ghosts, they haunt_ us’. I don’t remember, I couldn’t be bothered to memorize it.” Jon goes to the next display, this a series of small pots. He's frowning and tasting the anger of having to write a three page paper about the fucking sentence-long-nothing that that poem was. He didn’t do any research into its context or background out of spite.

“Are you talking about Graham Faust’s _And The Ghosts?_ Jon I’m so sorry that the ghosts poem hurt your young impressionable mind but I need to know if it was _And The Ghosts._ ” Martin rattles off, getting dragged after him.

“I don’t know or care to learn but I suppose it sounds familiar. Is it that famous? That you recognize it on sight? I somehow don’t want it to have that kind of popularity.” Jon examines the pots – a nice, clean form of art. Not someone’s wank about how they can write a poem that’s one sentence and then get talked about by fifty freshmen rushing to turn their essays in.

“It’s… famous for being concise. In the, um, poetry circles.”

“I’m sure it has some deep meaning, but also that only makes it more pretentious, like all other poems. You cannot change my mind about poetry. It’s defective, snobby song lyrics.”

The bowls were used for sorting grain, the display says.

Martin laughs a bit, “You’re very lucky I’m not weirdly passionate about modernism in poetry and that I also like you a whole lot.”

Jon sighs, “In hindsight, I’m glad you didn’t smite me for slander about sad lazy lyrics.”

“Jon!”

“ _Fine,_ poetry.”

“I’m going to write a sonnet about how much you hate poems, just to make your life difficult.” Martin leans down and kisses Jon on the cheek again, rather badly as he’s smiling at the same time. “And then I’ll print it on a shirt and make it my new merch line.”

Jon elbows Martin, sticking his tongue out, "Don't you dare." He imagines having to be associated with poetry in any way and cringes, then fully turns to Martin so as to best demonstrate his distaste, “That’s a legitimate threat for my health, I’ll have to get medical treatment after being exposed to such content. See you in the ER.”

“I’ll bring flowers.” Martin winks.

“With a little card hidden in the bouquet, but with the sonnet written on it?” Jon smiles, aware he's hogging up the bowls display just to talk with Martin.

Martin laughs, shoulders bouncing a bit, and dislodging his backpack, “I’ll also get them to read it over the ER announcement system at least three times a day.”

“Horrible.”

“Well deserved.”

Jon rubs at his face to attempt at banishing the smile that's crept onto there, and wonders if the ‘ _deserved_ ’ part implies him being bullied or getting poems written about him. They finally move on from the bowls when a lady with a really big camera channels hatred in their direction with passive-aggressive staring, first at them, and then at the obstructed view of the bowls. Jon leads Martin onto the next display and, as per request, supplies extra information about its contents. And the next, the next. Eventually, they run into Tim and Sasha at the maritime exploration exhibit, breaking out in hugs and overly exaggerated _wow, haven’t seen you in_ forever, _boy how have you grown! It’s been years._

They’d taken another route through the scrolls and texts section as well as checking out the botanical garden in advance, and Sasha’s already coerced Tim into buying them matching shirts with history puns: _Who invented King Arthur’s round table? Sir Cumference._

Tim leans over to Jon and whispers how he’s planning to blot out ‘ _ference’_ later and that Jon doesn’t have any library-policy granted powers to stop Tim from wearing it to work. Jon groans and after a few seconds admits he probably wouldn’t strike Tim at all, and he’s free to wear it in the library if he deems so necessary.

“Oh absolutely, this is an essential piece of the work environment.” Tim pats him on the back and all four of them move on as a single unit to make fun of some badly painted murals on the wall, depicting evolution. Martin hadn’t taken a single picture up until that point, even though he’d been the only person to bring a proper camera out of the group. And though he’d passed display after display of valuable historical artifact rather passively, the mural – and specifically one _very_ ugly fish on it - is what gets him to break and pull the camera out of his backpack. They ask another patron to snap a picture of all four of them against the wall, all pointing at the fish, and move on in a fit of laughter, beginning to head to the garden as lunch draws near, Martin’s hand in Jon’s and Sasha’s arm around Jon’s shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! <3
> 
> mesopotamian poem was taken from [here](https://jacket2.org/commentary/enheduanna-2300-bce-seven-sumerian-temple-hymns)
> 
> ghost poem that jon hates so much can be found [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56430/and-the-ghosts) (yes they made us study this in school)
> 
> and i, for one, can be found here on [tumblr](https://22ratonthestreet.tumblr.com/), come shout in my direction... I'm planning to draw that ugly fish soon

**Author's Note:**

> comments are the bread for the soul of ur local procrastinating-on-schoolwork-queer loveyall more chapters to come within the week


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